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*iii' ■ * 






















THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 




o 


t 


THE HOUSE OF THE 

SECRET 

{LA MA1S0N DES HOMMES VIVANTS) 


BY 

CLAUDE FARRERE 

u 

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY 

ARTHUR LIVINGSTON 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 


X 






Copyright, 1923 
By E. P. Dutton & Company 



First edition limited to 1500 copies 


y 

tj 


* *» 
< < f. 

< < 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA 


MAR 20 '23 

4 


© Cl A698669 




The House of the Secret 


i 


rpHIS day, January 20, 1909, I have decided 
-*■ to set my story down in writing. Danger¬ 
ous and terrifying the task! But I must per¬ 
form it. For day after tomorrow I shall be 
dead. Day after tomorrow. . , . Just two 
days! And death from old age! Of this I am 
as certain as a man can be of anything. [What, 
then, have I to lose by speaking? 

Speak I must! 

That much I owe to the unsuspecting men 
and w r omen who are to survive me. They are 
in danger; and I must warn them. * . . Day 
after tomorrow I shall be safe. Day after to¬ 
morrow I shall be dead. * . . And this is my 
testament and last will, written in my own 
hand! To all men and women, my brothers and 
my sisters, I bequeath—a Secret, the Secret. 
May my death serve as a warning to them, one 
and all! Such is my last will and testa¬ 
ment. . . . 

Now I am quite in my right mind—let there 

l 


2 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


be no doubt of that. I am sound, absolutely 
sound, in mind and, for that matter, in body. 
I have never known what it means to be sick. 
But I am old, old beyond human experience of 
age. How old, I wonder? Eighty? A hun¬ 
dred? Make it a hundred and fifty! It really 
doesn’t matter. I have nothing to decide the 
question. You might find my birth certificate, 
papers I may have written, people who may 
have known me. Such things would not help. 
Not even my own sensations give me any accu¬ 
rate impression of my actual age. I have been 
old for such a very few days! I have had no 
time to grow accustomed to the sudden change. 
There is no comparison, either, between my 
absorption of the centuries and ordinary old age 
—this last, indeed, has never been mine. I be¬ 
came what I am instantaneously, one may say. 

I am cold, inside here, in my blood, in my 
flesh, in my bones. And tired, horribly, unen- 
durably tired, with a fatigue that sleep cannot 
alleviate! My arms and legs are heavy and my 
joints are stiff. My teeth are chattering. I can¬ 
not bring them together on my food. I struggle 
to stand erect; but my shoulders stoop inexor¬ 
ably. I am hard of hearing. My eyes are dim. 
And these infirmities are the more excruciating 
because they each are new. No living man, I am 
sure, has ever been quite as miserable as I. 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 3 

But it will all be over in two days! Forty- 
eight hours! Two thousand eight hundred and 
forty-eight minutes! What is a matter of two 
days! The prospect fills my heart with hopeful¬ 
ness; thoughjdeath, in itself, is a terrible thing,!, 
far more terrible than living men imagine. That 
I know, as no one else knows. But I am ready! 
The life I am leading has ceased to be anything 
resembling life. 

So then, I am in my right mind. My head is 
clear. Furthermore, I am about to die. Two 
considerations, these, that should dispel all 
doubt as to my veracity. A man does not lie 
when he stands on the threshold of Eternity! 
So I beg of you who find this little book of mine, 
of all you who read this story of my Adventure 
—in the name of your God, if you have one, do 
not doubt me! I am not spinning you a yarn, 
nor telling you a tale for an idle hour. A great 
danger hangs over you, over your son, your 
daughter, your wife, your dear ones! Do not 
scorn my warning, therefore! Do not shrug 
your shoulders, or tap your forehead! I am 
not a lunatic! And death is standing near you! 
Do not laugh, either. But read, understand, 
believe—and, then—do as your best judgment 
dictates. 

Forgive me if I write with a trembling hand. 
The words may seem faint, almost illegible, 



4 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


at times. I found a pencil lying in a gutter on 
the roadside. Its point is dulled, and it is too 
short for my stiffened fingers. And this paper 
—from a funeral register—is not of the best. 
Its broad black border leaves very little space 
and compels me to cramp my lines. A broad 
black border! How inconvenient! Yet how ap¬ 
propriate ! This funeral page is perchance the 
best for such a story as mine! 

Here I begin. And again I beg of you; doubt 
me not, but read, understand, believe! 


i 


n 


TT all started with a letter from Colonel Ter- 
risse, commander of field artillery, to Vice- 
Admiral de Fierce, commander-in-chief of the 
Western Mediterranean, prefect of the Mari¬ 
time reserve, line-officer, and governor of the 
fortress of Toulon. The letter in question came 
in to Staff Headquarters by the evening mail of 
Monday, December 21,1908. Notice now! That 
was the twenty-first of last December. It is now 
the 20th of January, 1909. Not quite a month 
ago! It will be a month tomorrow, day for day. 
A month! One single month! Gods of Heaven 
and Hell! 

The Colonel’s letter reached Headquarters 
by the evening mail — military headquarters, 
you understand, not the naval. At Toulon, as is 
the case with similar stations, the vice-admiral 
in command functions in a double capacity as 
maritime prefect and military governor. His 
residence is the mansion of the prefecture; while 
his adjutant occupies the governor’s house. 
There are thus separate offices communicating 
by telephone. The wire is for obvious reasons a 
private one, independent of the city “central.” 

5 


G 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


I was in the officers’ room when the mail came 
in; and I opened the letter. Among my duties 
was that of reading and sorting the correspon¬ 
dence of the military commander. I was a 
captain of cavalry detailed to the General Staff. 
I was young—just thirty-three—thirty-three, 
mark you! And that was less than a calendar 
month ago! Four weeks and two days ago, to be 
exact. 

I opened the letter; and read it. It was a mat¬ 
ter of no great interest that I could see. I am 
going to transcribe it textually, however, for I 
can see it right before me now. 

XV th Army Corps 

FORTRESS OF TOULON 

Toulon, Dec. 21, 1908. 

Corr. No. 287 

Re: Broken Telegraph Wires 

Vice-Admiral Charles de Fierce, 

Commander-in-Chief of Western Mediterranean, 
Headquarters, Navy Yard, Toulon. 

Sir:— 

I have the honor to report that telegraph poles 
Nos. 171, 172, 173, 174, 175 are down as the result of 
a wash-out occurring on Dec. 19th last, and that, in 
consequence, the Tourris-Grand Cap line is out of 
commission. 

# I have issued the necessary orders for repairs. In 
view, of the heavy rains and the long distance the 
repair crew will have to cover over muddy roads, it 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


7 


is probable that the poles cannot be in place again 
under forty-eight hours. All communication by wire 
between Toulon and Grand Cap will accordingly be 
impossible for that length of time. 

I have the honor to be, sir, 

Your Obedient Servant, 

Terrisse, 

Colonel-iT^Command of Field Artillery. 

I need not observe that, in peace times, Toulon 
and the Grand Cap have nothing of importance 
to say to each other, with the single exception 
of days when there is target practice. The 
Grand Cap is one of the mountains in the chain 
east of Toulon. It is a bold, forbidding pile of 
rock, crowned with a modern and fairly strong 
battery. Ordinarily the place is held by a cor¬ 
poral’s guard, a full garrison being stationed 
there only during periods of manoeuvre. The 
country around the mountain is a rough unculti¬ 
vated heath virtually uninhabited. Charcoal 
burners camp there from time to time; but there 
are no farms nor permanent settlements. The 
wire leading to that God-forsaken place could 
be down for more than two days without the 
world’s coming to an end on that account! I 
was intending to file the colonel’s letter and let 
it go at that, when the telegraph corporal 
knocked at the office door. 

“A call for you, Captain,” he said, “from 
Naval Headquarters! ” 


8 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

“I’ll be there directly,” I replied. 

As I rose from my chair, I chanced to look at 
the clock over the fireplace. 

It was three P.M., to the minute. 

I stepped down the corridor to the telephone 
booth, which was in the adjoining room. 

I took up the receiver. 

The voice calling me by name over the wire, 
•was, as I recognized to my surprise, that of Vice- 
Admiral de Fierce, himself. 

< ‘ Hello! That you, Narcy! ’ ’ 

“At your service, Admiral!” 

“Barras tells me you have a horse down at 
Sollies-Pont. Is that right?” 

“Quite so, Admiral. I left my bay down 
there, last night.” 

‘ ‘ What condition is he in ? Pretty good ? ’ ’ 

“Excellent! Hasn’t worked for some days. 
I was intending to use him tomorrow, for the 
inspection at Fenouillet.” 

“Splendid! However, the inspection at Fen¬ 
ouillet is off. But I’ve got a dirty job to attend 
to; and I don’t see anybody handy except you.” 

4 ‘ Quite at your service, Admiral! ’ ’ 

“Good! . . . You know the wire is down be¬ 
tween here and the Grand Cap?” 

“I just received a letter to that effect from 
Colonel Terrisse.” 

“Now that’s a nuisance, just at this moment. 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


9 


The guard up at the battery there must be in¬ 
formed at all hazards that the seventy-fives will 
be working over at Roca-Troca tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow, Admiral?” 

“Yes, firing starts at noon. We can’t put it 
off, because General Felte must get away from 
Toulon tomorrow night at the latest. They’re 
going to shell the approaches to the mountain; 
and we’ve got to warn any wood-choppers there 
may be in the neighborhood. Otherwise some¬ 
body will be getting hurt! What time is it now, 
Narcy?” 

“Three five, Admiral.” 

“How far do you make it, from here to 
Sollies-Pont?” 

“Ten or twelve miles.” 

“Good! Well, telephone your orderly . . . 
you have a man down there, haven’t you? . . .” 

“Yes, Admiral!” 

“ . . , tell him to get your horse ready and 
bring it to you somewhere along the road. . . 
Are you in uniform?” 

“No, Admiral, military regulations permit 
civilian after luncheon as you know. I am wear¬ 
ing a riding suit, however, with boots and spurs. 
I was thinking of trying out Colonel Lescaut’s 
new mare this afternoon.” 

“Fine! I’ll send my car over to get you in 
five minutes. My man will drive you down to 



10 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

Sollies-Pont, and you’ll be there by 3:40. 
There’s no way of going on by auto, is there!” 

“To the Grand Cap! Impossible, Admiral. 
Even Valaury is difficult for wagons.” 

“You know the way!” 

“I think so. I went over the ground once last 
year, during evolutions. Beyond Valaury you 
have to take a trail, a sort of mountain road.” 

6 6 But a horse can do it! ” 

“It was on a horse that I went there.” 

“Very well, then. Try to make it. But the 
Grand Cap is a good hour and a half beyond 
Sollies-Pont, and it gets dark at five. You 
understand that!” 

“I’ll spend the night up on the Cap, of 
course.” 

“Yes. And it won’t be so bad. There’s an 
officers’ building there with good beds. The 
guard will fix you up. And you can come back 
in the morning. Sorry to give you a job like 
this, Narcy. But I don’t just see any other way 
out of it. We’ve got to get word to the people 
there. I had thought of sending a car around, 
by way of Revest. But just our luck! The 
road is torn up all the way from Ragas to Mori- 
ere. The simplest thing is for someone who 
knows the road to ride out from Sollies-Pont. 
And you seem to be the only man in sight.” 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 


11 


“Glad to be of use, Admiral. Your ear is 
here now. I hear the engine out in the yard . 9 ’ 

“Be sure to telephone your man at Sollies- 
Pont.” 

“The corporal will do that for me. Fm off 
without losing a second’s time!” 

“And ever so much obliged, eh, Narey? Call 
and see me wdien you get back!” 

I hung up the receiver. The telegraph cor¬ 
poral was standing outside the booth with my 
water-proof and my soft felt hat. A misty rain 
was falling outside. 

I hurried back into the office, gave a turn at 
the combination on the safe, and locked the cabi¬ 
net for the correspondence files. This latter 
operation wasted a good half minute. The lock 
was out of order and refused to turn. After 
some cursing on my part, it yielded to the key. 

Through the white lace curtains hanging over 
the office windows a bright, though grayish light 
was streaming in from the waning afternoon. 
The stove was glowing red, giving the room a 
touch of cosiness that I was to exchange with 
some regret for the raw damp outside. 

On the table I noticed Colonel Terrise’s let¬ 
ter, which, in my haste, I had forgotten to file. I 
thought of opening the cabinet again. But no, 
that would take too much time. Not knowing 
what else to do with the letter, I folded it and 


12 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


slipped it into the inside pocket of my waistcoat. 
. . . That is why I can see it now! 

In the conrtyard of Headquarters a hostler 
was currying the adjutant-general’s mare. He 
spat out the stub of his cigar and saluted me. 
In the west, a dim outline of the sun was visible 
through a thin place in the clouds. A tree near¬ 
by was dripping with great drops of moisture. 
The swinging of the outer gate rang a bell in 
the sentinel’s box. I remember that a dog, 
sleeping inside, raised his head lazily and looked 
up. 

Beside the curbing on the street, the Admir¬ 
al’s auto was standing, its sixty horse-power 
motor purring softly but powerfully. I opened 
the side door and stepped in. . . . 

We were off! 


m 


«*■ 


A T the corner of Rue Revel and the Place de 
la Liberte we iskidded as the chauffeur 
turned sharply to avoid a child playing just off 
the sidewalk. 

We slowed down along the Boulevard de 
Strasbourg on account of crowded traffic. I was 
shaken up as we stopped short under the Porte 
Notre Dame to prevent collision with a truck. 

We sped along through the Faubourg de 
Saint-Jean-du-Var between two rows of tall nar¬ 
row houses propped one against the other. 
Every three quarters of a mile we passed a trol¬ 
ley car. Some workmen were repairing the road 
under the railroad bridge. They had to jump 
to get out of our way; but a train passing over¬ 
head drowned the curses they sent after us. 

It had stopped raining; but the road was still 
wet and slippery. The gray sky seeemed to 
reach down and touch the roofs of dark tiling. 
Not a ray of sunshine brightened the landscape, 
depressing under the best conditions, but ghast¬ 
ly now under that mournful light. 

We reached the outskirts of the settled region. 
One straight unbroken line of mud, the road 

13 



14 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

reached oat into the foggy heath. Here now to 
the left the foot-hills of the Faron were rising 
one above the other. I leaned oat over the ran- 
ning board to get a good look at the top of the 
moantain. A thick bank of fog was hiding it 
from view. That was bad! The Grand Cap 
was higher still. I might have some troable in 
groping my way along, and I might easily take 
the wrong trail. Yes, that was something to 
think aboat. . . . Thoagh it worried me only for 
an instant. 

The village of Valette, the first town oatside 
Toalon in the direction of Nice! We were mak¬ 
ing forty miles an hoar. Children scampered 
this way and that to get off the road ahead of as, 
iscreaming at the top of their voices. I looked at 
my watch. It was twenty-six minates past 
three. I palled the wind shield down and nadged 
the chaaffear with my elbow. 

“We can speed her np, now, eh, till we get to 
the bad road?” 

“Yes, Captain.” 

The aato langed ahead at a fifty-mile clip. 
The macadam lay straight and level ahead of 
as. Here was the hamlet of La Garde, perched 
on its hill-top aroand its dilapidated castle. The 
train of thoaght was qaite involantary — bat 
these rains broaght back to my memory a wo¬ 
man’s face—the face of Madeleine, Madeleine 


15 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

de . . . I almost betrayed her name . . . whom 
I had met just a year before in those self-same 
ruins. 

The old walls stood out with their battlements 
cut clean against the darkening sky. The plain 
below was a naked, leprous tangle of stupid 
olive-trees. . . . But that day, I had crossed the 
courtyard of the castle; and, I remembered, be¬ 
hind the tower I had spied the slender, agile 
form of a woman. She was a sight-seer, prob¬ 
ably, resting for a moment on the top step of the 
stairway leading to the old postern. My heels 
clacked on the pavement, and she looked around 
my way—a dazzling vision of greenish golden 
hair, with eyes of emerald. 

Madeleine. . . . How endlessly, limitlessly 
far away all those days now seem! But they 
are so remotely past for me, alone. That woman 
is still alive . . . still young . . . still beauti¬ 
ful. Indeed it were indiscreet to give even the 
four syllables of her name. But there are so 
many Madeleines in the world—Madeleines even 
with hair of greenish gold and emerald eyes! 

Still at fifty miles an hour we swept into and 
through the village of Farlede. A mile or two 
ahead the first houses of Sollies-Pont were com- 
ing into view. 

I looked at my watch. Three thirty-nine! At 
three forty, to a second, we reached the turning 


16 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


where a road makes off from Sollies-Pont to 
Aiguiers and thence toward the Grand Cap. My 
orderly was waiting there, holding my horse 
playfully by the nose. "We stopped so short that 
I struck hard against the wind-shield with my 
chest. 

A moment later I was in the saddle. 

Some women of the village sat looking at me 
with interest from their door-steps. They 
thought the speed of my arrival and the sudden¬ 
ness of my departure were a bit suspicious. I 
remember hearing one of them remark in a 
shrill Provencal dialect: 

“Anyhow it’s not the kind of weather for a 
dress parade ... no girls are out !’ 7 

I believe those were the last words I heard 
that day . . . that day, which was the last day 
of my life, really. . . , 


IV 


T TOOK the Aiguiers road. The going was 
-*• good—not too slippery, not too hard. My 
horse was trotting cheerfully along, at an easy 
swinging canter. 

He was a fine animal and I loved him—a per¬ 
fect Arles thoroughbred, high in the withers, 
tshort in the cropper, with a fine spread of neck 
and shoulders. A courageous fellow, too, and 
so good-natured! I had picked him out at my 
leisure and just to my taste, during a turn of 
duty at the ministry in Paris. There you have 
facilities for such things that officers in garri¬ 
son never dream of ... I called him Siegfried . 
We had come to know each other very well; and, 
in all our intimacy as comrades, I never dis¬ 
covered a defect in him worth mentioning. 

Siegfried took me to Aiguiers without stop¬ 
ping once for breath. Aiguiers is a little clus¬ 
ter of houses backed up against one of the last 
foot-hills of the Maurras chain. Beyond there, 
the road began to get more difficult. It ran 
along a hillside above a ravine cut deep by the 
Gapeau. There were sharp turns conforming 
to the twists in the bed of the little torrent, 

17 


18 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 

where the water mirrored gray with the pallor 
of the leaden clouds. 

It now began to rain again, in huge drops 
that made visible circles in the silent pools of 
the stream. I suggested a gallop to Siegfried. 
Away oft to the right, the bell-tower of Sollies- 
Toucas pierced a clump of cherry trees. Then 
the road turned sharp to the left hiding the dis¬ 
tant village from view. Now there was nothing 
ahead but a deserted country, on which the sky 
was raining in a thick, dispiriting drizzle. 

Halfway up a steep fold in the ground, Sieg¬ 
fried slowed down to a walk. The other side 
was a more gradual slope, the inner rim of the 
great bowl of Valaury—a sort of crater, half 
filled, and perhaps two miles in diameter. Now 
the Grand Cap, hitherto concealed by the Maur- 
ras ridge, was in plain view. It came forward, 
as it were, out of the rain, sullenly dominating 
all the smaller hills around it. But its peaks 
were quite invisible, lost in the ceiling of clouds. 
It was nothing but a truncated cone, a huge pil¬ 
lar propping up the leaden architecture of mist 
and isky above it. Stray flecks of fog were 
wandering here and there along its sides, drift¬ 
ing slowly down to the break between the heath 
and the farm lands. For a second time the dan¬ 
ger of going forward into that thick and sticky 
gloom occurred to me. Even if I found the trail, 


19 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

it might be hard, if not impossible, to keep to it. 
. . . But, for the moment, the floor of the basin 
was clear and the path before me broad and 
level. A word to Siegfried and he joyfully re¬ 
sumed his gallop. 

Madeleine had often gone with me on early 
morning rides. There in the pine groves, which 
drape the Points of Cepet and Sicie in gorgeous 
green, we would trot along side by side inhaling 
the cool, resinous air. The memory came to me 
at just this moment; for the evening breeze was 
rising and I had breathed it deeply in. It felt 
damp and musty to my lungs, polluted with a 
strange odor of rotting leaves and oozing 
ground. I straightened up in my saddle for a 
deeper breath, a keener sense, of the uncanny 
smell. Yes, it was the same as before—and the 
queer notion came to me that it was the breath 
of the mountain, close, cadaverous, nauseous. 
A creeping, disagreeable chill ran over me! 

Siegfried, meanwhile, was galloping on; but 
in a moment or two I reined him in. We were 
well across the bowl, and the other slope, steep 
and slippery, was before us. At the top of a 
knoll four huts were gathered in jumbled array. 
No one seemed to be living in them, but a dog 
came out and sniffed at Siegfried’s heels, with¬ 
out, however, barking. 

We came to a fork in the trail. I stopped to 



20 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


consult my military map and get my bearings. 
Straight in front of me, the Grand Cap blocked 
the horizon with a formidable chaos of precipi¬ 
tous rocks. Its first foothills were perhaps a 
mile and a half ahead. Now this was East; so 
North would be on my left hand. I studied the 
map for a while. It was not so very clear, but 
I did make out the fork where I then was stand¬ 
ing and the two paths between which I had to 
choose. So far as I could see, they both led up 
to the battery; the one to the right, by way of 
the old convent of Saint Hubert and the village 
of Moriere-la-Tourne; the one to the left, 
through the hamlet of Moriere-les-Vignes and 
Moriere itself. I decided to take the latter 
route. 

Had I selected the other, Adventure doubtless 
would have missed me! 

As I went on again, I thought I could make 
out a sort of pinkish cast to the clouds 
heaped up along the mountain. I was headed 
west now. That radiance must be, therefore, a 
shaft from the setting sun making its way 
through the bank of mist and fog. Before long 
it would be pitch dark. Instinctively, I looked 
back to the eastward, better to gauge the ap¬ 
proach of night; and frank uneasiness came 
over me as I thought of the long distance still to 
go. Darkness, indeed, had already settled on 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 21 

the plains. It was climbing the heights of Sol¬ 
lies, engnlfing the basin of Valaury, and strid¬ 
ing rapidly, stealthily, along np the mountain 
trail behind me. Now it was passing us, reach¬ 
ing the dangerous slopes of the mountain far 
ahead. The path was barely perceptible, and 
Siegfried kept slipping alarmingly. 

For the first time, I clearly realized that my 
mission involved far greater risks that an un¬ 
comfortable night of wandering out in the cold 
and rain. 


V 


T T must have been somewhere on the northern- 
* most spur of the Maurras range that I lost 
my way. It was not yet night, exactly, but it 
was far from broad daylight. The trail seemed 
to come to an end in a tangled clump of bushes, 
that looked like all the other underbrush on the 
solitary heath. Siegfried went courageously in, 
however, slipping about, but shrewdly feeling 
the ground with a forefoot before he rested his 
weight upon it. I relied mostly on his instinct 
to determine what was path and what was 
heather. Unfortunately I had forgotten that at 
the northern tip of the ridge the Tourris trail 
makes off to the left from the route to the Grand 
Cap. I should have remembered this, I sup¬ 
pose ; for the Tourris trail makes a well-known 
tramp from Toulon—up to the famous Col de 
la Mort de Gauthier. Strangely significant 
name! 

My horse turned off on that trail, a fact of 
which I w 7 as not at once aware, because I had 
not even noticed the fork when w r e came to it. 

If the path hitherto had been bad, it now be¬ 
came positively dangerous. The ground was 

22 


23 


l THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

rough, broken by boulders and ledges and with 
deep ravines and rain-courses. We had left 
the rolling knolls about the basin of Valaury and 
were skirting the first rocky escarpments of the 
mountains. Siegfried went down on his knees 
a number of times. Meanwhile long streamers 
of cloud kept reaching down from the ceiling of 
mist above us, a ceiling that was closer and 
closer to our heads as we reached the higher 
land. Eventually we found ourselves in a sort 
of transparent, almost luminous, haze, which I 
knew was the forerunner of the bank of thick 
fog I had been watching as it drifted along 
some thirty feet above our heads. 

“Provence always was a dirty hole!” I swore, 
as I well remember. 

But at just this moment, the trail, if trail it 
could be called, took a sharp descent. Now we 
should have been going up-grade all along, and 
this sudden drop surprised me. Nothing of the 
kind had been indicated on my chart. I thought 
for a moment of consulting the map again, but 
the annoyance of unfolding the unwieldy paper 
and of studying in such wretched light all that 
maze of ditches and indentations deterred me. 
Besides, the drop soon came to an end and we 
were going uphill again, across a sort of hollow 
thickly overgrown with brush. The path was 
now a thing of the past decidedly. We were 


24 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 

in a thicket of cat-briar which scratched Sieg¬ 
fried’s belly and sides and cut my hands as I 
tried to keep the nettles off my own face. I 
could not get a good look at the ground, so thick 
was the undergrowth, but I observed that Sieg¬ 
fried was advancing with greater and greater 
reluctance. That much was evident. He did 
not like this going blindly into a territory where 
he scented danger. 

Now there was another sharp drop followed 
by a third up-grade. 

This convinced me that I was certainly off the 
road. I had been crossing a sort of saddle with 
three humps in line. No such ground figured 
on the trail to the Grand Cap. I thought I 
would keep on, however, to the top of the next 
rise. From there, perhaps, I could get a look 
around. 

And it turned out as I had hoped. 

From the top of the grade ahead, I could see 
a broad plain shut in on all sides by mountains. 
These were lost in the distance; but even in 
that heavy weather their outlines were charac¬ 
teristic enough. This massive barrier to the 
West could be nothing but the Faron — the 
“Sleeping Dog” as it is sometimes called from 
its unusual contour. Over here was the Coudon, 
just as surely; there was no mistaking its 
eastern spur, tsharp-pointed like the prow of a 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 25 

vessel cutting into the plain. Where was I 
then ? There could be no doubt. I had made the 
summit of “Walter’s Death” itself! So then, 
I must hurry back, and make as good time as 
possible! I must try to find the fork where I 
had gone astray and take the trail that went out 
to the right from there. Time was an important 
matter. I might still have a half hour left be¬ 
fore complete nightfall. 

Siegfried was loathe to plunge back into the 
maze of cat-briar from which we had just so 
painfully emerged. His nose had been scratched 
in a number of places. I pressed my knees into 
his sides to intimate that speed was a considera¬ 
tion. Pluckily he went back down the incline, 
and at the bottom, indeed, he broke into a trot. 

And he trotted on—but not for long. 

Just before we were reaching the second 
grade, I suddenly felt my saddle give way be¬ 
neath me. I fell, and so did Siegfried. I re¬ 
member the rough scratch of the brambles as I 
shot through them and the thud with which I 
struck on a stone. I lay stunned for the fraction 
of a minute; then I jumped to my feet, bleeding, 
bruised, torn, but unhurt, all in all. Not so with 
Siegfried! I knelt beside my poor, poor horse. 
His left forefoot had caught in a crevice be¬ 
tween two stones, and his leg had snapped like 
a pipe-stem at the ankle. Never again would 


26 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

Siegfried take me on my morning gallop! Never 
would lie leave that fatal gully into which he 
had gone so much against his will! 

I wept. 

We men of the cavalry think more of our 
horses than we do of our friends and of our 
lovers. I wept! But then, in a sort of reaction 
to cold brutality, I drew my revolver, pressed 
the muzzle into Siegfried’s ear, closed my eyes, 
and fired. The noble body trembled for a brief 
second; then it lay limp and relaxed under that 
shroud of bush and cat-briar. 

Coldly, mechanically, I returned my pistol to 
its place. Then I walked away, up toward the 
top of the second hill, where I sat down on the 
first stone I came to. 

A quarter of an hour must have passed before 
I came really to myself and thought of consider¬ 
ing the plight in which I found myself. 

It was not an enviable one! Here I was, on 
foot, well off any beaten trail, virtually lost in 
the most lonesome waste of the mountains of 
Provence. I had passed a deserted hut some 
four miles back on the road. The battery on the 
Cap must be fully seven or eight miles further 
on beyond the fork. And my duty it was to get 
there regardless of my helplessness in that im¬ 
penetrable thicket, from which twilight was 
rapidly fading now, yielding to black night. 



A GAIN I beg of you who read me. . . . Be¬ 
lieve ! Believe! Believe! 

I was seated on a stone, to one side of what I 
took for the path. My eyes turned down toward 
the hollow from which I had just come—the 
place where the body of my horse was lying. 
Then I looked in the other direction, over to¬ 
ward the first hump of the double saddle of three 
hills. I was intending to rise and start out on 
my way again. It was my duty. ... I was in 
honor bound to make the summit of the Grand 
Cap, find the battery, deliver my dispatch. 

Suddenly, on the hill-top—the first one—it 
could not have been more than a hundred yards 
away, I perceived a human form, standing out 
in dark profile against the still livid sky. I say 
it was a human figure. It was that of a woman, 
and she was coming toward me at a rapid pace. 

In joyous surprise I sprang to my feet. Cer¬ 
tainly this was the last thing on earth I could 
have hoped for in such a place and at such an 
hour. Even in daytime it is rare to find a 
peasant, a wood-chopper, or a hunter in the 
neighborhood of the Mort de Gauthier! There 

27 



28 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

are no trees worth cutting on those barren 
mountain sides. There are no fruits nor ber¬ 
ries, nor even game. Yet here on this cold, 
rainy, foggy night I was meeting a woman— 
the only woman, as I was willing to bet, who 
had been along that trail in a month’s time. 
Somebody from Valaury or Moriere, probably, 
hurrying to get home by nightfall. She would 
be well acquainted with the region, doubtless, 
and would be only too glad to set me right about 
the trails. 

I took two or three steps in her direction, ob¬ 
serving, however, that she would pass right in 
front of me, in any case! How fast she was 
coming, too! How easily she managed all that 
rough uneven ground! 

She was now some twenty yards away. And 
I stopped in utter stupefaction! 

She was not a peasant girl, by any means. 
That dress! It was of a fashionable cut, such 
as a society woman of distinction might wear. 
An afternoon otter cloak, edged with ermine, in 
the latest style; a large loosely hanging muff, 
of ermine also; a turban hat with plumes, the 
latter lying flat and pasted to the crown by the 
rain and mist. She had no umbrella and no 
heavier coat. There was nothing about her that 
seemed probable in that wilderness. I glanced 
in panic around me to be sure I was indeed in 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 29 

the foothills of those mountains and not in the 
winter-garden of some fashionable hotel on the 
Bine Coast; that it was the same desert in which 
I had lost my way, and that it was a cold, raw, 
rainy night of December. 

I could scarcely breathe now, and a cold chill 
began to run up and down my back. 

Was it not an apparition? 

Perhaps, but no ordinary apparition at any 
rate! Here was no impalpable, supernatural 
body. For I could hear the crunching of her 
feet on the leaves, a slight squeak in her shoes, 
and the silken rustle of her garments as they 
brushed against the brambles. 

The woman came up to me, passed me, barely 
grazing my body. She was looking fixedly 
ahead, without stopping, without turning her 
eyes this way or that. I had first a front view 
of her features, then another in profile. I recog¬ 
nized her! It was she! 

“Madeleine!” 

The cry came from me involuntarily, a cry 
of terror absolute: 

“Madeleine!” 

The woman seemed not to hear, just as she 
had seemed not to see. She walked rapidly past 
and away down the trail into the underbrush of 
the hollow. 


VII 


M ADELEINE, Madeleine de ... 

But no. I must not write her name! 

I had met her the year before—that would be 
year before last, the year 1907. It was the 
month of May, I believe, but of that I cannot be 
sure. It seems so long, long ago, such a fright¬ 
fully long, long, time ago! My memory is 
faltering like a waning candle flame flickering 
above its last drop of molten wax, sputtering 
with bursts of blue and yellow light as it is about 
to die out! 

So then, the month of May, in the year 1907. 
... At this moment, a clearer flash of my mem¬ 
ory comes—I see everything as vividly as I 
lived it then. 

It was in the courtyard of the castle at La 
Garde. I had strolled up the winding path to the 
ancient ruins; and behind the tower of the old 
donjon, I found . . . Madeleine sitting on the 
last step of the stairway leading up to the pos¬ 
tern. She turned at the sound of my footsteps 
and she blushed. That blush told me I had in¬ 
truded on a very personal, a very intimate, 

30 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


31 


reverie. At our feet stretched the leprous plain 
and beyond the southern limit of the plain, the 
sea. A radiant sky, not a trace of vapor veiling 
the glare of the naked sun! The ugly plain 
caught fire from the rain of light, became beauti¬ 
ful for a moment. It was one of those golden 
days, when the chest can scarcely contain the ex¬ 
ultant throbbing of a drunken heart! 

"When my eyes fell on the greenish golden hair 
of Madeleine, my heart began to throb intoxi¬ 
cated. When her emerald eyes fell on me, my 
bosom heaved with an inner, ecstatic joy. 

Later we knew that that instant had been the 
beginning of our love; for Madeleine confessed 
to me that a deep mysterious thrill had moved 
her also, at sight of my own enthralling emotion. 
. . . And the incredible horror of it all! That 
was not quite two years ago. And this hollow 
bag of crackling bones was I, I, a young, strong, 
hopeful man, loved and in love! Less than two 
years ago! 

Sometime later: a fiesta at a sumptuous coun¬ 
try house, looking down on the sea! Precipitous 
promontories, into which the maritime fir trees 
shot their roots and hung out horizontally above 
the foaming surf! Paths winding in and out 
among the trees—and lanterns, lanterns every¬ 
where, shedding a soft and mellow light about 
the groves! 


/ 


32 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

There I saw Madeleine a second time! 

An evening gown of cloth-of-silver, cut low 
over splendid shoulders; and my eyes lingered 
on them with imperious desire! 

We met by a balustrade hanging out over the 
sea. The subdued murmur of the breakers soft¬ 
ened the echo of our voices. In the distance the 
wail of violins! Other couples ^walking to and 
fro on the path behind us! A man and woman 
came up to our terrace, broke the silence of our 
communion, went away again! 

We talked of indifferent things—the small 
change of conversation, withholding words of 
deeper import. We sat there for a long time. 
One by one the lanterns burned themselves out. 
A red oval moon came up out of the sea, reached 
out along the water in the outline of a glistening, 
elongated cypress tree. The violins fell silent. 

We walked back toward the villa. 

Madeleine rested a cold hand on my arm. A 
sudden exaltation came over me. That woman 
whom I had so passionately loved under the hot 
sunglow of an afternoon was now at my side.-' 
We were alone in that pine grove, alone under 
that moonlight! I threw an arm about her 
shoulders, drew her toward me, and pressed my 
lips to her lips in a kiss she did not avoid. 

This was less than two years ago! It is Hel] 
to remember it now! 


Yin 


A/T ADELEINE was a vivacious creature. 
■*•*-■* Her graceful, subtle, intelligent beauty 
was not coarsened by the ruddy vitality of her 
features and the warmth of passion evident in 
the Southern blood that raced through her blue 
veins. I must not linger on these impressions, 
however; they are of interest only to me. I am 
not writing a diary of my inner life! I am not 
writing my memoirs! This is a testament, in 
which I bequeath to the generations after me a 
Secret which it behooves all men and women, 
my brothers and sisters, to know. It were bet¬ 
ter, perhaps, to abbreviate my story, suppress 
everything not pertinent to that Secret. But I 
must convince the sceptical. The voice of Truth 
must be felt in every word I say. I must show 
myself to be really the man I pretend to be: 
Charles Andre Narcy, captain of cavalry, Dis¬ 
tinguished Service Cross, detailed to Staff 
Headquarters, born in Lyons, April 27th, 1876, 
died at Toulon, December 21, 1908 (or January 
22, 1909). That I am this person I can prove 
only by this story. What desperation! Only 
by this story! I must convince you by the de- 

33 ^ 


to 


34 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


tailed fullness of my account. And in this sense, 
everything, everything, has a bearing on the 
Secret. 

Now I must say that Madeleine was a beauti¬ 
ful, vivacious creature, plump with the healthy 
vigor of her Provengal race. And as I took her 
in my arms for the first time, I noted what a 
firm, solid, heavy person she was. 

; Later, when once I took her in my arms again 
and playfully lifted her from her feet, she 
seemed to me much lighter, much lighter! 

1 Madeleine de X . . . What horror! If only 
I could give her name! Then you would know! 
And she would confirm my story! However . . . 
honor impels me at this point to evade a little, 
to falsify a number of dates, and places, and de¬ 
tails. You must get the meaning of what I say; 
but what does it matter if I write “June” 
instead of “October,” or “Tamaris” instead of 
44 Hyeres, ” 4 4 taxicab ’ * instead of 4 4 Peuchot . 9 9 I 
must be careful, all the more because from 
moment to moment the flame of my memory is 
weakening, trembling, threatening to go out, re¬ 
viving again only after minutes of anguish! 
The flame of my memory, and the flame of my 
intelligence, also! If I am not on my guard, 
some word, blighting to a lady’s honor, may 
escape me! 

She was the only daughter of a rich man! He 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


35 


was a hard, sour, ill-tempered fellow. During 
winter seasons he lived in a decrepit castle lost 
in the chalk dunes between Toulon and Aubagne. 
There he kept aloof from the world, receiving no 
visitors and making no calls himself. One of 
those domestic tragedies, as laughable in the 
eyes of society as they are torturing to the 
hearts they tear, had separated him from his 
wife some twelve or fifteen years before. The 
old folks in Toulon, Nice, Marseilles, used to 
refer amusedly to the story, which they con¬ 
sidered a most savory scandal. I never had an 
appetite for such things. I am unable to tell 
exactly why that man and that woman separ¬ 
ated ! I was never a friend of either of them. 
I saw him occasionally, in the old days, at our 
officers’ balls. His wife I used to meet from 
time to time at various resorts along the 
Riviera. She had a luxurious villa at La Turbie 
and another at Beaulieu. Part of the year she 
lived on her owm properties; another part in 
Paris; usually she spent tw^o or three months 
with Madeleine in Toulon, for there her daugh¬ 
ter married and settled permanently. 

In the summer months, Madeleine lived in a 
cottage of her own on Cepet Point, where the 
peninsula juts out into the roadstead and is 
always exposed to a cool breeze. Inspections 
often took me to the batteries in that neighbor- 


36 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


hood, and I had occasion for many a delightful 
promenade in the groves and forests of Cepet 
and Sicie. I would ride up on horseback with 
an orderly, who came on the horse that Made¬ 
leine was to ride. We kept a side-saddle for her 
in the sentry box at one of the customs ’ houses. 
. . . If you want details, there you have plenty 
of them. However. . . . 

I have figured it out: It was in the month of 
May, of the year 1907, that I met Madeleine for 
the first time at the old castle at La Garde; it 
was in the month of June of the same year that 
I encountered her for the second time at the 
fiesta; it was two or three weeks after that when 
I first took her in my arms and lifted her from 
her feet. 

And, she was a heavy person, robust, solid, 
well-built, but heavy, heavy! 

Some two months later, when we were playing 
on a beach, it occurred to me to take her in my 
arms and lift her again. I turned all my muscle 
to the task and prepared for the strain I so well 
remembered. To my surprise she was light, as 
light as a feather, strangely, surprisingly light! 
I carried her about in my arms without effort. 
And she had been such a heavy person! 


IX 


rilHE dying flame of my memory burns up 
** here into a brighter light. I remember the 
following with a strange, besetting vividness. 

As Madeleine rose from the sand some straws 
and bits of earth clung to her skirt, and I 
brushed them oft. Under the trees that bor¬ 
dered the shore, our horses were browsing at 
some leaves, and I still can hear the crumpling 
sound as they chewed them. To get back into 
the saddle, Madeleine rested a foot in my hand; 
and again I had that sensation of her extraor¬ 
dinary lightness . I looked up at her in some 
alarm. 

As we rode along, I finally asked concernedly: 

“My dear, have you been quite well these days 
past?” 

She seemed surprised at the question: 

“IV’ 

“Why yes, you! You seemed rather tired, I 
thought!” 

She opened her handbag, produced a beauty- 
box and looked into the tiny mirror that was on 
its cover. Then she laughed: 

“What can you be dreaming of, silly! You 

37 


38 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

quite frightened me! But my skin is as rosy as 
a milkmaid’s!” 

That was true. The exhilaration of the drive 
had brought the ruddiest glow to her cheeks. 
She brushed them over Avith her powder puff, 
however. I might well have accepted the ex¬ 
planation, but a feeling of uneasiness came over 
me. Might there not be strange diseases that 
eat out the vitality of a person without changing 
appearances of perfect health? Certain fevers 
bring rosiness and not pallor to the features! 

I had not seen Madeleine for nearly a week 
just previous. She usually told me all she did. 
Perhaps she had been tiring herself in some 
way or other: 

“What have you been doing, love, since I saw 
you Tuesday?” 

“Since Tuesday?” she repeated with some 
hesitation. 

“Ho!” said I, “What a memory! Yes, since 
Tuesday, to be sure!” 

“Oh, yes! ... It would be easier to remem¬ 
ber if there were anything in particular,” she 
replied. “I have done nothing at all, stupid! 
Oh yes, that’s so! I did go into town once! 
That was Thursday! ’ ’ 

“And without telling me you were to be there, 
where I could have seen you?” 

She turned toward me and stared, with a cer- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 39 

tain perplexity, as one looks on discovering in 
the mind a thought, or a memory, one had never 
dreamed of finding there. She repeated my ex¬ 
clamation with an interrogative inflection: 

“Without letting you know V’ 

She looked dreamily down over the mane of 
her horse. Then she resumed.' 

* 6 That ’s true! I didn’t let you know! ’ ’ 

And she blushed in the most evident per¬ 
plexity and confusion. I was quite amused; and 
I went on: 

“And I suppose you had a date with some¬ 
body . . . somebody whose company was far 
more alluring than that of your old friend per¬ 
haps! . . .” 

She passed a hand across her forehead, as 
though to collect her thoughts; once, twice she 
did this. And I noticed that where her four 
fingers pressed upon her marble skin, four 
ruddy spots appeared. 

“Did I see someone?” she asked. “Whom 
did I see?” 

She asked the question quite innocently in a 
sort of dreamy reverie. I raised my voice in 
mock severity, the way one calls a child to 
order: 

“ ‘Whom did I see!’ How should I know, 
dearie, whom you saw? I was asking you?” 


40 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

L 

She started imperceptibly, and then quite 
changing tone and manner, she resumed: 

“Oh, I made a mistake . . . Thursday! I 
didn’t go into town, Thursday! It was Tues¬ 
day, and I took the train . . . for Beaulieu!” 

“I see ... so your mother is at Beaulieu 
again. You paid her a visit?” 

“Nonsense! Mother is at Aix! This is Sep¬ 
tember, you see!” 

“Why Beaulieu, then?” 

“Why Beaulieu?” 

Again she seemed to have lapsed into a 
dream. As she answered, her lips quivered and 
each word came out with an effort that was no¬ 
ticeable. 

“Because . . . why yes ... I had some er¬ 
rands to do there. ... I went to Beaulieu. 
. . . In fact . . . see for yourself ... !” 

She dropped the reins and began looking 
through the little bag that was hanging from 
her wrist. 

“See . . . here is my ticket ... !” she 
added triumphantly. 

I was quite puzzled, less at the fact of her 
visit to Beaulieu than at her whole manner. 
And my astonishment was not relieved when I 
observed that the ticket had been punched but 
once. 

“You got on the train—that is evident! But 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 41 

how do you happen to have the ticket, anyway? 
How did you get through the gate without giv¬ 
ing it up?” 

Her eyes turned toward me vacantly, wide 
open, almost bulging: 

“Why, I . . . Yes • . . How do I know? Of 
course not! I didn’t give it up. I suppose the 
gateman failed to ask me for it. . . .” 

And her brow knit into a slight wrinkle that 
seemed to mark a strange and intense mental 
concentration. A second later she seemed to 
give up, and she confessed: 

“Listen, darling ... I think I had better 
tell you. ... It’s all so absurd. ... I’m really 
quite ashamed. But I think you ought to 
know. Well . . . see here ... I simply don’t 
know why I went to Beaulieu Tuesday. There 
was nothing, absolutely nothing, to call me there 
. . . at least, nothing that I can remember right 
now. ... Nor can I remember having done 
anything in particular when I got there. . . . 

I left Tuesday morning and I came back 
Wednsday night. . . . And I was all tired out 
when I reached home. . . . There you have the 
whole story. ...” 

I was so astounded at this incredible tale that 
I pulled my horse up short. 

“The whole story! That’s absurd, my dear! 


42 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


Yon must have left word at home . . . given 
some pretext. . . .” 

“Of course . . . but what it was I can’t re¬ 
member!” 

“But your housekeeper . . . your maid . . . 
your husband . . . when you came home, they 
must have asked you about the villa or some¬ 
thing!” 

“Yes, my husband asked me if I had had a 
good trip and I answered that I had! ’’ 

“And the train . . . the journey itself . . . 
the station . . . Beaulieu! Where did you go, 
when you got out of the train?” 

“To ... to the villa, ... of course!” 

“Of course nothing! You don’t seem to be 
so sure!” 

“Oh, I’m sure . . . sure enough! The trou¬ 
ble is, Andre ... I don’t know, it all seems so 
vague and hazy in my mind . . . and it’s funny 
. . . the harder I try to remember, the less I 
seem able to . . . Oh, I’m ill, ill, Andre! Here 
. . . here!” 

And one of her pink fingers pointed to the 
vertical wrinklet between her eyebrows. As I 
sat there looking at her fixedly, searchingly, she 
burst suddenly into convulsive sobs. I reined 
my horse to her side, put my arm about her 
shoulders, and kissed her tears away. 



OR I loved the girl! 

* I make that confession here again, absurd, 
ridiculous, grimly ironical though the declara¬ 
tion may seem. 

I loved her. This I must say so that all of 
you . . . men and women . . . will understand, 
and believe! 

I loved her. Notice: I met her on a sunny 
afternoon in May; and again on a moonlight 
night in June; and I found her beautiful; and I 
told her so. . . . To you cynics it may seem 
strange, incredible, to call that love! I can see 
you smiling! 

But—all of you—look around among your 
memories, try to remember! You have all met 
your mistresses for the first time at some time 
or other. Before that, you were not in love. 
You began with simple curiosity; and your first 
kiss was a kiss of playfulness—“Once will do 
no harm!” And perhaps often it was the first 
and the last kiss. 

But more often the first kiss gave you a long¬ 
ing for the second. The flirtation became pas- 

43 


44 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

sion, and the passion devotion. “Once!” 
“Again!” “And again!” And, finally, “For¬ 
ever!” “For all our lives!” 

Oh, yes, I know, I know! It was all a dream, 
and people cannot dream forever. The flesh is 
weak, and the spirit less enduring than the 
flesh. You wearied of each other! Forever be¬ 
came a year, six months, six weeks! Love, in¬ 
difference, infidelity, estrangement, oblivion! 
Oh yes, I know, I know! But what of that ? It 
was honestly that you loved each other! In 
good faith you swore: “I must have you with 
me forever!” In good faith you promised to 
love each other and cherish each other and 
cleave unto each other! And truly would you 
have laid down your lives that your mistresses 
might never die. . . . 

Smile then, if you wish, when I say that I 
loved her! 


f 


XI 

CO then, it was twilight, just after snnset on a 
^ raw, foggy, rainy day, the 21st of December, 
1908—my last day of life. And around me was 
the hill of the strangely significant name: Le col 
de la Mort de Gauthier! A cry of terror had 
escaped me: 

* 6 Madeleine V 9 

It was she—Madeleine, the girl I loved, alone, 
afoot, on that deserted heath, on that raw, 
foggy, rainy, wintry evening — Madeleine, 
hurrying along that solitary trail through the 
sweet-fern and the cat-briar, in her afternoon 
costume, as she would dress for a tea at a 
fashionable hotel . . . and twenty miles from 
home! 

“Madeleine l" I called. And she seemed not 
to hear me, and not to see me; but hurried on, 
on, on, rapidly, with unerring step, over that 
rough and broken and rain-soaked ground. 

My heart stopped beating. For ten, fifteen, 
twenty seconds I stood there paralyzed, rooted 
to the trail. Then I came to myself; and in a 
mad dash down the incline, I went off in pursuit 
of her. 


45 


46 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


Ahead of me I could see her figure already 
ascending the slope of the third knoll. She 
moved easily, rapidly, experiencing no difficulty 
from the matted underbrush and cat-briar. She 
was following the trail. But at the top of the 
hill she turned—to the eastward, with her back 
to Toulon, that is. There a thick curtain of 
night seemed to have fallen before the taller 
underbrush. I saw her skirt as it vanished 
across the line of darkness into shrubbery that 
reached above her head. A second later I 
caught a glimpse of her ermine collar farther 
in, and then once more and then for a third 
time. 

I was running with all the headlong speed I 
could muster. My foot caught in a snarl of cat- 
briar. I plunged forward, scraping across a 
flat stone. But I barely touched the ground. I 
was on my feet in an instant. “Madeleine! 
Madeleine!” I called. 

I thought I caught sight of her ermine collar 
again as she hurried across a clearing. Then 
she was gone. The wet moss was thin above 
the solid ledging of the knoll. It slipped under 
my feet, on the brink of a ditch such as that 
which had cost Siegfried his life. I fell a 
second time. Again I was on my feet. And 
now, against the sky over the hill-top ahead of 
me, profiled on the leaden but much darker 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 47 

clouds, I saw the same mysterious figure I had 
seen at first—save that now it was of hazier, 
more indistinct outline. 

“Madeleine! Madeleine!” I shouted des¬ 
perately. And I dashed on. 

Step by step the figure sank behind the crest 
of the hill. When I reached the place,. I found 
one of her footprints in the mud on the edge 
of a stone. But she had disappeared complete¬ 
ly. The soft moss preserved no record of her 
passage. Before me lay the silent, deserted 
slope of the Col de la Mort de Gauthier; to the 
right the escarpments of the Maurras range; to 
my left the approaches to the Grand Cap. And 
no signs of any human being! 

In anguished desperation I tore out into the 
underbrush, on which night had definitely fallen. 
I was determined to overtake the fugitive, get 
to the bottom of this prodigious mystery. I ran 
and ran, all my heart bent on finding the slight¬ 
est trace of her ... all my heart and all my be¬ 
wildered mind. I mounted great boulders with 
one bound, and was over them in another. I 
went forward springing from rock to rock, fall¬ 
ing at times, turning my ankles, forcing thickets 
of briars by sheer weight of impact, tearing my 
clothes, scratching my face and hands, but run¬ 
ning, running, running. I thought I saw a light 
off to the left. I turned in that direction, and 


48 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


again ran on. I must have spent hours in this 
fruitless, aimless, despairing search. I remem¬ 
ber that finally I sank to the ground, breathless, 
exhausted, utterly unable to move. I don’t 
know where I fell. I know simply that I lay 
there, insensible, corpse-like, dead; and, as hap¬ 
pens when one had gone beyond his physical 
and spiritual resources, a deep, dreamless, an¬ 
nihilating sleep came over me. 


xn 


T T OW long I had been sleeping there I do not 
* know. But suddenly a curious, though 
well-known sensation drew me from my slum¬ 
ber—the sense of a strange presence near me, 
and of a gaze fixed upon me. I was lying on one 
side, with my forehead resting on my bent arm. 
Evidently then I could not see; but the emana¬ 
tion of that presence and the weight of that gaze 
impressed me at one and the same time, as a 
veritable blow striking me on the back of the 
head. The experience was not new to me. 
Often in a sound sleep have I thus divined the 
approach of a living being—though never with 
such intensity as this. I had the consciousness 
that the person who was thus powerfully exert¬ 
ing his influence upon me could be like no other 
human being I had ever seen. And I, who at 
that time—how unutterably distant in the past 
it seems!—was a young, a vigorous, a courage¬ 
ous man, instead of sitting up at once, and fac¬ 
ing my visitant, lay there as I was, for some 
moments, with my forehead resting on my arm, 
pretending not to be awake, and listening, 
listening. 


49 



50 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


Through my half-opened eyelids, I could see 
perhaps a square foot of earth and moss in the 
area encircled by my arm. That earth and that 
moss were lighted by a pale, trembling, yellow¬ 
ish glow. I understood that someone was wav¬ 
ing a light above my head. 

At last I did sit up and with a start, as though 
I had just awakened. And I rose to my feet, 
drawing back a step in bewilderment. 

A man was standing before me, a very very 
aged man; as I remarked from the long, broad, 
glistening, snow-white beard that covered his 
chest and abdomen. That much I could see in 
spite of the glare from a dark lantern which he 
was holding with the spotlight up-turned into 
my face. However, his voice had no huskiness 
when he addressed me. It was deep and solemn, 
but without a sign of trembling or of faintness 
—on the contrary, it seemed resonant with 
virility and vigor. I was somewhat taken aback, 
besides, with the curt abruptness with which he 
questioned me: 

‘‘What are you doing here, Monsieur?” 

That was not the greeting I had been expect¬ 
ing ; and in view of the obvious plight I was in, 
I found it quite discourteous. But the man was 
at least three times my age, I judged, and I 
answered as politely as I could: 


51 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

“As you see, Sir, I am off the road and quite 
lost, I fear.” 

He kept the spotlight playing on my fea¬ 
tures, and I observed that his two piercing, 
extraordinarily luminous eyes were studying 
me critically. * 

‘ ‘ Lost, eh ? And here! How did you get here, 
Sir? And where were you going?” 

I was now frankly irritated at these irrele- 
vancies; so much so, indeed, that I failed to 
note the incongruity of such formal and correct 
language in the mouth of what must apparently 
have been a charcoal-burner of the mountains. 

Drily I exclaimed: 

“I came from Toulon by way of Sollies-Pont 
headed for the battery on the Grand Cap. I 
missed the trail somewhere near the Col de la 
Mort de Gauthier. There my horse fell and 
broke his leg; and I got lost trying to reach the 
paths up the Cap, cross-country.” 

This version of my experiences seemed mod¬ 
erately to satisfy the old man. He took the 
light away from my eyes and swept the bushes 
and rocks about us with it. It was, in truth, an 
appallingly wild locality. In my mad race 
through the darkness I had reached a jumbled 
region of rocks and ravines where my presence 
might well astonish anybody. But I had just as 


52 l THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

good a right to wonder. How should he happen 
to be there, too? 

“ And you, Sir, what were you doing away off 
here?” 

He shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the 
top of an escarpment that towered on my left. 

“I saw you from up there!” he said. 

And he fell silent, as did I. 

No longer pestered with the glare in my eyes, 
I could examine my strange companion at more 
advantage. He was an old man, no doubt of 
that, an extremely old man, as his snow-white 
beard, his wrinkled, withered skin, his lean, 
tenuous hands attested. But he was a marvel¬ 
lously robust and wiry old fellow. There was 
no droop to his shoulders. He held his head 
erect. His arms were well knit at the joints and 
he seemed lithe and agile on his legs. In view 
of his whole bearing, which suggested strength, 
energy, initiative, I gathered that the cane on 
which he was leaning he carried not for support 
but as a weapon. 

I, a soldier in my early thirties, felt helpless 
in the presence of that powerful octogenarian. 
Instinctively my hand went to the automatic in 
my hip-pocket, where only one of the eight bul¬ 
lets was dead—the one that had put poor Sieg¬ 
fried out of his agony. However, I felt 
ashamed, almost at once, of such stupid and un- 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 


53 


reasonable fear of the man. I again addressed 
him, and this time with a deferential and some¬ 
what effusive politeness: 

“I have not thanked you, Sir, as yet. Do, 
please, excuse such rudeness. I appreciate your 
generous kindness in going to so much trouble 
in my behalf. I am sure you have saved my 
life by coming to my rescue down that perilous 
cliff. Please accept my deepest thanks. I am 
Captain Andre Narcy, of the staff of Vice-Ad¬ 
miral de Fierce ... !” 

I stopped, expecting that a name would be 
volunteered in exchange for mine. But the old 
man did not introduce himself, though he did 
listen to what I was saying with the closest at¬ 
tention. I began again: 

“I was, I am, the bearer of a dispatch to the 
corporal on guard at the Grand Cap battery. It 
was in an effort to execute that mission, un¬ 
fortunately still unperformed, that I lost my 
way, wandered aimlessly about for a time, and 
finally lay down here to sleep when I was quite 
all in. And now, Sir, might I impose upon your 
kindness further? Could you not direct me to 
the Grand Cap trail, the good one, the one I was 
looking for and could not manage to find 
myself ?” 

Meanwhile I was studying the old man care¬ 
fully. There was nothing unusual about his 


r 


54 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

dress. His clothes were, to a button approxi¬ 
mately, those one might expect to find in such 
weather on a shepherd, a hunter, a wood-chop¬ 
per of those mountain regions; heavy hob¬ 
nailed shoes and thick leggings, corduroy trous¬ 
ers and coat, a plain flannel shirt. But it was 
just at this point that the contrast between his 
costume and the cultivated intonation of his 
language first impressed me. The observation 
caused me another thrill of fear. In my eonfu* 
sion I caught his reply but indistinctly: 

“The good road, Monsieur? In truth, you 
are on the bad road, the worst road, I might 
even say!” 

I suppressed my uneasiness as best I could: 

“Where am I, exactly? Am I far from the 
battery?” 

“Very, very far!” 

“Well, but . . . what do you call this 
place ? ’ 9 

“I doubt if it has a name! At any rate, you 
will not find it on your chart!” 

“Oh, you must be joking. I can’t be so very 
far oft the road! I must be somewhere between 
the Mort de Gauthier and the Grand Cap! Call 
it eight miles to the fort . . . and you will be 
putting it high!” j 

The fist that was clenched about the cane rose 
and fell in a gesture of ironic helplessness: 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 


55 


“Well, call it eight miles, Monsieur. How 
conld you do eight miles in a dark like this?” 

Again he swept the spotlight around that 
chaotic devil’s dump of boulders. To tell the 
truth, I cringed with involuntary terror, though 
I did manage to pull myself together again: 

“Do them I must, in any event. The dis¬ 
patch of which I have the honor to be bearer is 
of the first importance. You will be so kind, 
Sir, as to suggest the direction of the battery— 
and I will be infinitely obliged.” 

The point of the cane swung upward from the 
ground toward the steepest of the precipices, 
the upper brink of which projected out into the 
chasm in a menacing overhang. 

“It’s off in that direction,” said the old man. 

I bowed with some ceremony, determined to 
waste no further time: 

“Thank you, and good night, Sir!” 

Resolutely I advanced to the foot of the cliff, 
and climbed up to the first indentation in the 
virtually perpendicular wall. But a sullen rage 
came over me as I realized the impossibility of 
making the ascent: 

“Off in this direction, eh? But there are 
night hawks that seem to get around all right— 
and with little loss of time!” 

I grumbled the words between my clenched 
teeth, addressing them to my own angry self 


56 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


alone. The man was fully fifty feet away and 
could not possibly have heard. Yet I suddenly 
felt the same pressure on the back of my head 
and between my shoulders which had been the 
cause of my awakening. The man was looking 
at me! That impact was the shock from his 
piercing eyes! I turned sharply about, almost 
expecting an attack from him. 

But he was standing just where I had left 
him, his eyes fixed upon me with an expression 
in no sense hostile. Rather I seemed to catch 
a smile of kindliness playing about his withered, 
wrinkly features. When he now spoke, the same 
note of kindly benevolence was sensible in his 
voice, and the abruptness noticeable in his first 
questions had also softened measurably: 

“Monsieur/’ said he, “I was loathe to ven¬ 
ture a suggestion which you had failed to invite 
and which, doubtless, you would be quite un¬ 
willing to accept. Nevertheless ... I should 
be grievously at fault, were I to let you run to 
certain death. I will give you an hour to break 
a leg, or an arm, or your neck, in tumbling into 
one of these gorges. Suppose you lay with a 
fractured skull at the foot of a wall of rock— 
your message would not be delivered any the 
sooner, would it? Don’t be impatient! Wait 
till daylight comes! And an early morning 
start will bring you to the fort and, perhaps, in 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 57 

time. Try to get there now and your dispatch, 
I assure you, will never reach its destination! ’’ 
He stood there thinking for a moment and 
then he concluded pensively: “A mountaineer 
as experienced as I am might possibly venture 
such a thing. But at night, over rock that is 
forever breaking off under your feet ... !” 

I don’t know why, at just that moment, my 
thoughts reverted to the other encounter I had 
had a few hours earlier in that self-same neigh¬ 
borhood. I closed my eyes to reconstruct in 
my mind the image of Madeleine, deaf, mute, 
unconscious apparently, running that heath like 
a somnambulist. . . . And for the third time, 
but on this occasion full in the face, I felt the 
impact of the fluid energy which seemed to 
spurt from the eyes that were fixed upon me. 
When I looked up again, the same uncontrol¬ 
lable terror was in possession of me: the man 
was in truth gazing at me—and that was all. 
An extravagant suspicion flitted across my 
mind: that man, that curious old man—could 
he be listening to the sound of my thoughts, as 
I could hear the sound of his words! 

At last he seemed willing to come to the point: 
“Consider, Monsieur! I live not far from 
here! Would you not accept my hospitality 
until dawn! The rain is beginning again. It 



58 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


will be wet and cold on the mountains, and it is 
hardly midnight. ’ 7 

I looked around in astonishment into the wall 
of darkness about us. He lived near-by? A 
house, in that appalling solitude ? 

He understood my perplexity. 

44 Quite so!” he said, answering my unex¬ 
pressed thought. “Quite so! Just a step or 
two! This way, Monsieur, if you please!” 

His voice had now a soft, caressing gentle¬ 
ness ; though I sensed an imperious order in his 
words—a command I could only obey. 

When he turned to go, I followed him. 


XIII 


Tj^ASILY, lightly, rapidly, over the jumbled 
^ rocks and through the tangled underbrush, 
the hoary old man made his way, beating his 
cane to right and left to open a path before us. 
I kept carefully to his foot-prints, really exert¬ 
ing myself, however, to maintain his rate of 
progress. 

Fully a quarter of an hour it must have been 
that we walked thus in file one behind the other. 
Then my guide stopped of a sudden, turned 
toward me, and said: 

“Monsieur, you will be careful!” 

His cane pointed to some obstacle, or to 
some danger, just to my right. Cautiously I 
stepped nearer, and a creeping chill ran over 
me: we were on the brink of a precipice, its 
edges so thoroughly masked with fern that a 
step six inches off the path would have hurled 
me into a void. I could not have guessed the 
nearness of such peril. Feeling the ground in 
front of me with my toe, I leaned over and 
peered down into the abyss. Along its bottom 
a mountain torrent ran, black water rushing 
over polished white stones. The sheer face of 

59 


60 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET. 

the gorge offered not a projection to foot or 
hand. 

“Keep well to the left, Monsieur ,” said the 
old man; and he strode on. 

The ground now took on a strange contour 
previously unknown to me. The ditched, pock¬ 
marked, crevassed soil of the Mort de Gauthier 
where my horse was lying, and the maze of 
gorges through which I had pursued Madeleine, 
came to an end. We were now on a gently slop¬ 
ing table-land broken in all directions by curi¬ 
ous blocks of stone. The soil was overgrown 
with brambles, juniper, and numerous other 
spiny shrubs. The rocks sprang naked from 
the earth in abrupt faces cut apparently to geo¬ 
metrical design, triangles, squares, polygons, 
as though fashioned with human tools. On the 
one hand, none of their surfaces was sufficiently 
smooth to warrant the assumption of deliberate 
working; on the other there was too little ir¬ 
regularity in their structure and disposition to 
allay wonder at such a strange caprice of Na¬ 
ture. As a whole, indeed, they formed a veri¬ 
table labyrinth, through which it would have 
been difficult to pick one’s way even in broad 
daylight. The old man went indifferently on¬ 
ward, nevertheless, not hesitating in the least, 
and finding his path without effort through this 
entanglement of scattered boulders. 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 61 

Again the topography changed. The mono¬ 
liths became fewer in number; the plateau had 
a perceptible down grade. The junipers, 
myrtles and mastics grew stunted and less 
crowded, and the land was otherwise quite 
barren. 

If I describe this walk of ours in such detail, 
I do so in the hope that some of you may be 
tempted to seek out in the neighborhood of my 
misfortune, the house of which I am to speak. 
Its exact location I cannot recall. I could not 
find it again for the life of me; nor could I 
really identify it among other houses you might 
show me. It is, nevertheless, the House of the 
Secret, though all I can say of it is that, at last, 
we came to it. 

In the opaque wall of darkness ahead of us a 
tall black mass stood out against the paler black 
of the night around it. First came a hedge of 
tall cypress trees, the boundary of a private 
park, a hedge like the thousands of other hedges 
one may find about the country villas of Prov¬ 
ence— the Provence that frizzles in summer 
sunshine. i 

In the hedge was an iron gate, between the 
bars of which the old man slipped a hand and 
turned some secret lock. The gate swung open. 
My feet began to tread on a soft, thick sod, un¬ 
mown. Brushing my head I could feel low- 


62 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


hanging branches of cedars, pines and cork¬ 
trees. Finally through the inky black of the 
grove the brick-stone front of a house came into 
view. It was so dark nnder the matted inter¬ 
lacing of branches along the walk, that I could 
not isolate a single distinctive feature on the 
facade before me, except perhaps the stone 
stairway up which I went to a door. There 
were just eight steps. I remember because I 
counted them. One other detail: from the roof, 
and on my left as I went in, an indistinct but 
tall, slender mass seemed to rise, a sort of 
tower, or belfry. . . . Mark this item carefully. 
. . . It may help you! 

The door was of heavy oak, studded with iron 
nails. The knocker was a hammer and an anvil, 
the latter with two points and set deep into the 
thick panelling. 

As he raised the hammer, my companion 
turned to me, his eyes gleaming with an eager¬ 
ness I did not like. But his voice, soft, calm, 
caressing, benevolent, once more relieved my 
fear, once more constrained me to resist an im¬ 
pulse to stand on my guard like an animal at 
bay! 

“Monsieur,’’ he said, a I am sure you will 
forgive me for a slight advertence: my father, 
who is about to open the door, is a very old man, 
and his sleep must be respected; you will be 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 63 

good enough to make as little noise inside as 
possible!” 

The metallic beat of the hammer upon the 
anvil strangely mingled in my ears with the 
words I had just heard. It was something like 
an echo of the stupor, which, at these strange 
phrases, struck me like a blow. So this old 
fellow had a father, whom he referred to as an 
old man! If he was eighty, more or less, how 
old would this parent be? 

Again the hammer fell upon the anvil in a 
double rapid stroke like the ritualistic stamp of 
the fencer’s foot as the duel begins. And this 
double stroke was followed by another, a single 
one, like the first. 

The door swung open. 


J 


\ 


XIV 


T HE anteroom that now came into view was 
a spacious one, dimly lighted by two can¬ 
dles. I could make out a series of frescos on the 
four walls above the paneling, which was of 
some dark almost black wood, oak or walnut, I 
should say. Except for the heads of two stags 
with antlers, there were no ornamental furnish¬ 
ings. The doors, in some ancient style, were so 
fashioned as to blend, when closed, with the 
sheathing. 

But one detail I did see with absolute distinct¬ 
ness the moment I crossed the threshold. 
Standing in front of me, with his left hand still 
on the latch which it had just opened, was an 
old man so like in every particular to my guide 
that I turned, despite myself, to be sure it was 
really a case of two different individuals and 
not of one with an image reflected in a mirror. 
They had the same long, wide, flowing snow- 
white beards; the same serious, motionless, 
mysterious eyes. Yes, I turned and stared; 
Such complete identity was beyond belief. But 
yet, they were really two men,—father and son, 

64 


65 


THE HOUSE OF, THE SECRET 

—the son bowing with deference to the father. 
In fact, this demeanor on the part of the person 
who had come through the heath with me was 
the means, henceforth, by which I managed to 
distinguish the younger from the older man; 
though both, to the eye, seemed equally full of 
years, not to say centuries, ages; both equally 
robust, withal, equally erect of carriage, equally 
muscular with the litheness of youth. 

I had stopped instinctively, eventually mus¬ 
tering presence of mind enough to bow deeply 
to mine host, a greeting which he returned 
politely but without pronouncing a word. His 
eyes, meanwhile, were surveying me with the 
most searching fixity. After a time they turned 
for the fraction of a second upon my escort, and 
I understood that they carried a question, im¬ 
periously. 

“I took upon myself, Sir, the responsibility 
of bringing this gentleman here. I found him 
lying out in the rain in the hapless state you see 
him in. He had gone astray among the boulders 
at the outer end of the labyrinth. ” 

These sentences were uttered in a half¬ 
whisper, as though the speaker were afraid of 
disturbing a household at slumber. 

The father did not answer for a space of time 
which I found a markedly long one. Then he 
said: 


66 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

“Your conduct was quite proper, I believe, 
Sir.” 

And he too spoke in a half-whisper. 

These “Sirs” between father and son aston¬ 
ished me with their savor of antique formality; 
and I was impelled thereby to glance at the 
costume of this hoary gentleman who was thus 
addressing his offspring with the ceremonious 
formulas of bygone feudal days. Nothing in 
particular! A rustic outfit in corduroy, exactly 
like that of the “boy”; except that the elder 
man wore old-fashioned knee-breeches with 
woolen stockings and buckles at the knees. 

The son was meantime recounting my story 
to his parent with a fullness that neglected no 
detail. 

“Monsieur is an officer,” said he. “His 
name is Narcy, Captain Andre Narcy. He is 
the bearer of a sealed dispatch for the fort on 
the Grand Cap, and this dispatch, a very urgent 
one so it seems, must be delivered at the earliest 
possible moment. That is why I judged it best 
to offer our hospitality to monsieur for the 
night: he must have a good rest to be in con¬ 
dition for a hurried journey tomorrow morning, 
when daylight will permit him to make the 
ascent without such a distant wandering from 
his path as he fell into—for lack of a guiding 
hand—tonight. For, without any doubt what- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 67 

ever, monsieur met not a living soul along the 
trail to set him on the right road. And that, 
without any doubt whatever, is the reason why 
monsieur strayed so very very far from this 
Grand Cap where he was going.” 

The innuendos in this narrative did not fail 
to impress me. I scanned the faces of the two 
men, one after the other, anxiously; but neither 
carried the slightest expression. The father 
answered also in a tone that was entirely nor¬ 
mal, repeating word for word his earlier sen¬ 
tence of approval: 

i ‘ Your conduct was quite proper, I believe, 
Sir.” 

I groped about in my mind for an appropri¬ 
ate phrase of thanks; but before I hit upon one, 
mine host, pointing a finger at one of the in¬ 
visible doors in the paneling, remarked, still 
addressing his son: 

“It is evident that monsieur should be al¬ 
lowed to retire at once. Be so good as to show 
him to his room, Sir! You will need a light.” 

I bowed in acknowledgement, without speak¬ 
ing. The son was already in motion, leading 
the way with the same spotlight playing on the 
room about us. Our first steps on the tiled 
floor raised a curious echo in that all but un¬ 
furnished chamber, the four walls of which 
threw each sound back upon us and seemed to 


68 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


prolong it with a briefly sustained tremor. The 
spotlight chanced to cast a round, luminous 
circle upon one of the frescos. As far as my 
hasty glimpse of it enabled me to judge, it was 
a mythological subject in faded color and not 
over-stressed design — a birth of Aphrodite 
from the sea, perhaps. 

My guide drew back, in succession, three long 
thick bolts, longer and thicker than any bolts I 
could remember ever having seen. They se¬ 
cured the door to which the elder of the two 
men had pointed. A closer view of the wall 
revealed to me that beside this door there was 
another, similarly disguised in the paneling 
and fastened in the same way. Taken together, 
they might have been mistaken for the two 
wings of one folding door, joining very badly, 
for that matter, despite their rugged hinges; 
for a gap of a full inch was visible under each 
of the presumed wings, leaving free play to 
draughts. 

These observations had scarcely flashed 
through my mind, when the old man, the father, 
that is, who had been standing in the center of 
the reception hall with his eyes glued upon me, 
advanced suddenly in my direction, and his 
steps, light as they were, echoed about the room 
as ours had done. I stopped and looked at him. 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 


69 


[With a gesture, and speaking to me directly for 
the first time, he said: 

“ Monsieur, I forgot to remind you that in our 
house, and not far indeed from the quarters you 
will occupy, we have a case of sickness. Might 
I request you, therefore, kindly to make as little 
noise as possible?” 

This was the second time I had been urged 
not to talk; but the pretext had been different 
on each occasion. . . . 

And then something happened ... a very 
inconsiderable thing, which gave me a distinct 
shiver of excitement. It was not so much iny- 
self who trembled, but rather that submerged, 
unconscious being we each have within us which 
watches while we slumber and ever has a mem¬ 
ory and a consciousness quite apart from our 
waking selves. . . . 

From under the other door—the door which 
had not been opened, namely—a sudden draught 
of warm air came. It was cold, noticeably cold, 
in the reception hall; but behind the closed door 
was a room which they kept much better heated. 
Now that draught of warm air! ... As it 
passed through my nostrils, I became gradually 
aware of its fragrance. It was sweet with a 
perfume which my conscious self did not recog¬ 
nize, but which my submerged ego at once re¬ 
membered— my submerged ego only, indeed. 


70 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

That is why I had crossed the threshold of the 
open door before I really understood. . . . 

Before I really understood, that is, what the 
closed door concealed. . . . 


XV 


TD EYOND the door that was open stretched a 
passageway, and at the end of the passage¬ 
way came another door. Once we were through 
the latter, the spotlight of my escort fell upon 
a flight of stairs, six steps high, as I counted. 
I noted also that the treads were of the same 
red square tiles as the floor of the reception hall. 
Only the nosings were of wood, a wood much 
worn from long service. At the top of the 
steps my guide opened one last door. 

I now found myself in a very dark room, so 
dark, indeed, that I paused just inside the 
threshold from fear of colliding with some piece 
of furniture. The man, however, drew aside 
the top of his lantern and from the flame within 
it began to light the three wicks of a massive 
iron candlestick, a sort of tripod fashioned to 
represent three lances supporting one another. 

The room brightened. I noted that it con¬ 
tained this candelabrum, one chair, and one bed, 
the latter simple, home-made articles such as a 
peasant might improvise for himself. 

“And I wish you a good night, Monsieur , 59 
said my guide, with a bow. “Please sleep quite 

71 


72 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

at your ease. I shall have the honor of waking 
you in time, myself.” 

‘* At sunrise ? ’ ? said I. 

“At sunrise,” he answered, “or perhaps 
. . . perhaps a moment or two before sun¬ 
rise. . . .” 

That seemed to me a very natural thing to 
say, and I returned his courtesy: 

“Good night, Monsieur!” 

He went away. I listened to his footsteps as 
they clacked on the tiles of the six steps, and 
then on the pavement of the passage. Finally 
I heard the door into the anteroom swing to, 
and, less to my surprise than to my alarm, the 
great iron bolts slide back into their places: 
the grating sound they made, however slight, 
was quite audible in the absolute silence of the 
mansion. 

I sat down on the wicker chair at the foot of 
the plain pine bedstead. 

In sitting down I had intended to collect my 
thoughts if possible, bring a little order into the 
chaos of impressions, suspicions and fears that 
were whirling in my bewildered brain. But I 
had hardly touched the seat, when an unex¬ 
pected sensation put an end to my reflections. 

I had cast my eyes about the four walls of the 
room where I now was — four walls cheaply 
papered in a stock design of loud colors. Again 


73 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

tlie miserable poverty of the furnishings had 
impressed me, with the exception of the antique 
candlestick. The place, indeed, in its present 
condition, had all the appearances of a spare 
room, roughly fitted up with these few odd and 
ill-matched articles. I should not have thought 
it strange had I detected there the close musty 
odor that one always meets in apartments long 
unoccupied and rarely aired. 

But that was not the smell that came to my 
nostrils. Quite the contrary in fact! The room 
was suddenly fragrant with a warm living per¬ 
fume, a perfume that now reminded me of the 
one I had vaguely perceived in the draught 
from under the closed door of the anteroom. It 
was not the same perfume, by any means, 
though it was of the same general kind, one of 
those essences which float about every house 
where women are, combining the most diverse 
aromas into a single fragrance that is the allur¬ 
ing fragrance of feminine beauty. 

I brought all my senses to bear upon it. 
“Heliotrope,” I analyzed, . . . “and rose”! 
The isolation of these two essences seemed all at 
once to sharpen my memory of the earlier per¬ 
fume ; the latter, unmistakably, had been a lily 
of the valley. 

“Muguet,” I said aloud, “lily of the valley!” 

All a-quiver I leapt to my feet, terrified, 


74 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

stunned, but ferociously determined. Of course! 
Of course! The two syllables of that French 
word, muguet, had brought a flood of light into 
my clouded mind. Of course! Muguet! Her 
perfume! Madeleine! Madeleine! 

It is curious that in the overwhelming an¬ 
guish that had now seized upon me, an insignifi¬ 
cant thought came to the surface of my seething 
consciousness and restored all the coolness and 
self-control that I had lost: “What an un¬ 
conscionable ass I have been! Fool! Fool! 
Fool! Of course! Of course! WFy did I not 
get the point at the very first? Long ago, long 
ago? After the very first suspicious words I 
heard from the mouths of those two weird hosts 
of mine? . . . Fool of fools! WFy did I not 
recognize her perfume out there in the hall 
where I first perceived it—before those three' 
bolts were drawn upon me, leaving me a help¬ 
less prisoner in this hole where I am caught like 
a rat in a trap? 

“Helpless, eh? Like a rat in a trap, eh? Not 
quite.’ ’ 

I was almost normally calm as I put a hand to 
my belt and drew my revolver. Helpless, eh? 
There were eight cartridges in my automatic, 
and I had used only one—the one that put poor 
Siegfried out of his misery! “Seven left! 


75 


.THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

Helpless! Not so helpless as all that! There 
must be seven of them!” 

I snapped the lock on the hammer and opened 
the magazine. The seven bullets were in place. 
I threw the barrel back into position and re¬ 
leased the lock again, testing the trigger lightly 
with my finger to be sure the requisite free play 
was there. I put the pistol into my coat pocket, 
with my right hand upon it. 

“At sunrise, eh! You were coming back at 
sunrise, old Methuselah! Do! I shall be glad 
to see you!” 

I looked at my watch. Two o’clock! It was 
mid-winter time. The dawn would be long in 
coming. 

I rose from the chair and stepped over to the 
bed. The sheets were singularly delicate, the 
coverlets thick and downy. Another breath of 
perfume floated past my nostrils.—I buried a 
fist in my hot, feverish cheek. . . . That bed, 
so daintily prepared! It had been offered to 
me! But for whom had it been made so cosy! 
Who slept there ordinarily! And my thoughts 
flashed out through the walls and partitions of 
that accursed mansion to another room, where 
there would be another bed and in it a woman, 
sleeping! Madeleine, my Madeleine! 

The dart of horrified jealousy that ran 
through my heart was like the thrust of a sharp, 


76 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

white-hot sword. Madeleine! There, in that 
other chamber, at night! The victim of what 
unconscionable sorcery! The plaything of what 
loathsome and.nnmentionable desires! 

But no—my calmer judgment soon concluded. 
Those men—demons, perhaps—could not have 
been dastards in the thrall of lust! That secret 
house could not be a House of Love! What was 
the mystery, then? Wliat? Oh, what? 

The three candles were flickering at the three 
points of their tripod of lances. The door! I 
looked at it. Here also the joinings yawned 
from age. And that would doubtless be the case 
with the window. 

For there was a window in the room, the room 
that was really my prison. 

I stepped over to examine it, pressing my 
forehead to the panes and plunging my gaze 
into the outer blanket of darkness. 

Nothing! Nothing at all. An impenetrable 
pall of inky blackness came right up against my 
eyes. A thick growth of ivy formed an outer 
curtain over the window, weaving a fabric 
through and around the heavy iron bars which 
guarded it. 

A prison! That was the very name for it! 

I heard footsteps moving softly along one of 
the partitions behind me. I held my breath. 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 77 

Soon silence returned, complete death-like 
silence. 

I went back to the bed and lay down upon it, 
waiting, ready for anything. I had my clothes 
and my boots on. My hand clutched the butt 
of the automatic in my pocket. 

I waited, my eyes glued upon the door, my 
ears straining to catch the slightest sound. 

I waited! 


Ti 


» 


XVI 


L ITTLE by little my brain had regained its 
lucidity and my heart its normal beat. 
Now, outstretched on the bed, with my boots 
and clothes on, and my hand upon my pistol, I 
was waiting, waiting. I noted the fact: the 
hand upon my pistol had not a tremor: it was 
ready to kill. My Adventure was approaching 
its denouement. I would soon have to fight a 
battle, where I must needs come off victorious. 
These considerations were like a potent cordial 
to my overstrained nerves. So cool and col¬ 
lected indeed had I become that I was now pre¬ 
pared to take everything as a matter of course. 
I could, that is, restrain my astonishment, or at 
least postpone any expression of it. Madeleine, 
in that mysterious house, at that time of night! 
No, there was no explaining it, with any ex¬ 
planation at all convincing. But, for the mo¬ 
ment, no explanation was necessary, or in point. 
We would come to that later—after the combat 
—which must end in my victory. Meantime, all 
conjecture would be superfluous. 

The three candles were still burning on their 

78 


79 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

tripod of the three crossed lances. But they 
were getting short. I took out my watch and 
looked at it. Half past two! The candles would 
almost certainly fail to outlast the night. And 
to shoot accurately you must see, clearly see, 
your target! I rose from the bed, walked over 
to the candlestick and put out two of the three 
wicks burning. Then I went back to my bed 
again. 

But I had my boots on. My spurs had 
scraped noisily on the tiling of the floor; and, 
since the latter had no carpet, my heels had 
clacked loudly as I walked. And that was not 
the worst of it. As my weight came down upon 
the edge of the bed, the spring gave a long, 
piercing, metallic squeak, which, in case anyone 
at all were guarding me, had a fine chance of 
being heard, in that sepulchral silence reigning, 
two or three partitions away. This reflection 
had had just time to settle clearly in my mind, 
when, and almost as an echo to the creaking of 
the spring, the lock in the door of my room 
creaked in turn. 

With a bound I was off the bed; and I had 
to restrain myself in order not to level my auto¬ 
matic upon the door and let fly the moment it 
opened. 

I managed to control that impulse. Besides 
there came a knock, a discreet, a courteous 


80 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


knock, on the panel. The door swung open 
slowly, and in the doorway I saw one of my 
hosts, I conld not decide whether the father or 
the son, but at any rate one of the two old men 
with the long, broad, glistening, snow-white 
beards. He was standing there quite motion¬ 
less, not presuming to come in. His eyes, in 
truth, had swept me with a glance from head to 
foot; and there I was, with my clothes and my 
boots on, in the unmistakable posture of a man 
who had not been in bed at all, who had resisted 
slumber, and kept on watch, nervous, sus¬ 
picious, mistrustful, ready for any emergency 
that might arise. I caught a rapid flash in those 
scrutinizing eyes, a lightning-like flare that 
vanished on the instant. And again a thought 
that I had had before flitted across my strain¬ 
ing consciousness: those penetrating eyes—did 
they not have, perchance, the power of going 
deeper than my forehead, piercing through to 
the secret thoughts harbored naked in my 
brain? 

And then the old man spoke: 

“Monsieur has not been sleeping. Truly, we 
suspected as much. In view of that, why should 
monsieur pass such a dull time alone here in 
this chamber? Would monsieur not like to join 
us in the room below? I think that would be far 
better—for monsieur, as well as for us.” 


l the house of the secret 


81 


I had regained my composure once more; and 
I answered with decision: 

“I will accept your invitation, Sir!” 

And I advanced upon him. 

But he drew back, as though to let me pass 
in front of him. This I refused to do. He may 
have guessed what was in my mind, for he did 
not insist. He led the way in front of me, with 
the words: 

‘ ‘ As you will, Monsieur, . . . just to show 
you the way! . . .” 

On reaching the reception hall, I stopped in 
front of the door where I had caught the breath 
of Madeleine *s perfume. But it was not toward 
it—not as yet toward it—that I was guided. 

In fact, the old man went straight across the 
anteroom, and, seeing me motionless in front of 
the same door, politely called: 

“This way, if Monsieur will be so kind!” 

Another door, concealed as all the others in 
the paneling, now opened, not, however, into a 
corridor, but directly into a large, in fact, a 
very very large room, which was thus cut off 
from the reception hall by the thickness of one 
partition. 

My eyes winced before the glare of some fifty 
or sixty candles distributed about the room in 
holders along the walls and of two massive 
lamps, one to either side of the fire-place. The 


82 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

latter was a majestic hearth in ancient style 
with a huge embossed and sculptured hood 
spacious enough, I thought, to accommodate a 
goodly number of whole oxen. 

Seated in an armchair and facing me as I 
came in was the old father—so at least I de¬ 
cided; but next to him, now, was a third aged 
man whom I had not seen as yet, and whom I 
took for a much younger person than the other 
two, though he also was far from young. They 
both bowed in greeting as I entered. 

I stopped near enough to the door to prevent 
its being closed. The man to whom I had not 
been introduced motioned toward an empty 
chair. I declined it with a shake of my head; 
whereupon he rose: 

“As you will,” said he, “I understand your 
feeling!” 

His voice was in a very queer falsetto. 

I saw him push his chair back and come for¬ 
ward a step in my direction. His two aged com¬ 
panions took up positions to the right and left 
of him, as though he were their chief. Chief in¬ 
deed he proved to be. 

There was a moment’s silence: then this man 
resumed: 

“Monsieur le capitaine, I must offer you my 
apologies. It may seem inconsiderate of me to 
have disturbed you in your slumbers. But it 


.THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 83 

may be you were not baying a very quiet repose. 
In that case I may count on your forgive¬ 
ness! . . 

He broke off, and pointed with a gesture 
first to the one and then to the other of his two 
companions. 

“And pray forgive them, too,” he added. 
“They are well-meaning boys, on the whole, 
though their manners leave something to be de¬ 
sired. In this they are entitled to be excused, 
perhaps, in view of the place and the times we 
are living in and our aloofness from most men 
of the world. Certainly it would be difficult to 
explain away all their breaches of good form 
to a stickler on the niceties of conduct or to some 
one of over-delicate susceptibilities. But such, 
fortunately, you prove not to be, and I must con¬ 
gratulate you on your forbearance. Neverthe¬ 
less, I cannot overlook the first and grossest of 
the impertinences inflicted on you. When you 
were so kind as to volunteer your name, this 
young man here neglected to give his name to 
you. I have reproved him severely for this 
oversight, and I solicit your indulgence in his 
behalf. He is the Vicomte Antoine, at your ser¬ 
vice, Sir; and here is Count Frangois, his father, 
if you please. And I—you will pardon me—am 
the Marquis Gaspard, father of Count Frangois 
and grandfather to Vicomte Antoine. There 


84 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


yon have ns all; and now, I trnst, yon will not 
impose npon me the hardship of remaining 
longer standing. Let ns be comfortable! Will 
yon not please take a chair!” 

The door behind me was wide open still, as I 
satisfied myself with a glance in that direction. 
Moreover, the strange address I had been listen¬ 
ing to had a cnrionsly persuasive quality. I 
sat down as had been suggested, and the three 
of them did likewise. 

“Dear me, dear me,” said the Marquis Gas- 
pard as he eased himself in his cushions. “You 
have left the door wide open, and a terrible 
draught is coming into the room!” 

Hastily the Yicomte Antoine arose; but he 
w T as not so quick as I. I was at the door in a 
second and closed it with my own hands, making 
sure, meanwhile, that a simple latch was all that 
fastened it. 

“Thanks, a thousand thanks!” exclaimed the 
marquis. “But, Monsieur le capitaine, why go 
to such extremes of courtesy? My grandson 
could have closed it just as well!” 

I was already in my seat again, and the 
vicomte in his. There was a period of silence, 
in which my eyes had time to flit about the room. 
A couple of logs were glowing in the ancient 
fire-place. The candles about the walls were 
gleaming brightly. The beams in the ceiling 


85 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

were darkened from the smoke of the open fire 
during many years. The easy chairs I found 
quite beautiful in their upholstery of old 
brocade. 

And there were my three hosts! 

An uncontrollable astonishment now came 
over me, something far in excess of any of the 
surprises I had experienced heretofore. Those 
two more than centenarians in their long snow- 
white beards were respectively son and grand¬ 
son of the third, who seemed to be, by far, the 
youngest of the three! His face, smooth 
shaven, had not the trace of a wrinkle. There 
was no suggestion of sunkenness about his eyes; 
just as his falsetto voice came from high in his 
throat without a tremor and without hesitation. 
And yet—such the situation seemed to be! He 
was indeed the ancestor par excellence, the 
veritable patriarch, and of an age that beggared 
the full many years of the fathers of Abraham! 

But of what could I be really sure ? 

The silence continued unbroken. Now we 
were in our chairs, the three of them facing me. 
They looked for all the world like a tribunal, 
with the marquis figuring as chief justice, and 
his son and grandson as associates. And I, 
what was I in that picture? Suspect? De¬ 
fendant? A culprit awaiting sentence? 

The silence lasted an unutterably long time. 


86 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

The three pairs of eyes fixed upon me eventu¬ 
ally got on my nerves. To conceal my annoy¬ 
ance and self consciousness, I turned my head 
and again examined the vast hall. It was a sort 
of living-room—low-studded—and not a parlor, 
nor a lounge. The woodwork on the chairs was 
gilded, and the upholstery, as I had before ob¬ 
served, was of old brocade. The plastering was 
painted simply, without hangings, mirrors, or 
pictures, of any kind. Meagre, also, the fur¬ 
nishings: in addition to our four arm-chairs, 
two divans in the same style (an impeccable 
Louis XV), and two seats of fantastic form— 
dormeuses, one might have called them—with 
complicated rests for arms and feet and head, 
and so deep that they might have smothered 
rather than accommodated the human form. I 
further noticed an old-fashioned clock and a 
chest, on opposite sides of the room, and then 
a kind of horse, or easel, such as painters use 
to incline their canvases according to the fall 
of light. 

I was studying this latter object, when the 
Marquis Gaspard coughed, and then sneezed 
noisily. My eyes came back to him. He was 
holding a snuff box in his hand and had just 
taken a pinch from it. He returned the object 
to his pocket, and then began, evidently by way 
of introduction: 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 87 

“Monsieur le capitaine, I am eager, before all 
else, to convince you of our good will in your 
regard, a good will that is absolute and which 
will prove, I trust, efficient. Changing times 
have done us wrong, to tell the truth; for to 
look at us, I suppose, one would take us rather 
for brigands of the wild than for amiable, well- 
intentioned gentlemen. And yet, we are not so 
bad as we seem, a fact of which you will, in the 
end, become aware.” 

The old man fell silent, took out his snuff-box 
again, treated himself to another pinch, and 
then sat thinking for a moment. 

“Monsieur,” he resumed at last, “I should 
dislike being put into the position of matching 
wits with you. I prefer to rely on your honesty 
and honor as a soldier of France. I put the 
question quite bluntly therefore: Was it, or 
was it not, by pure chance, that you came, last 
evening, so very very close to this residence of 
ours?” 

I did not have time to answer. He silenced 
me with a gesture and went on: 

“Of course, I take a number of things for 
granted. You did not venture into this retreat 
for the purpose merely of paying us a visit! 
Far from that, monsieur! My vanity would not 
be crossed if I did not hear such an extravagant 
avowal on your part. I am quite ready to admit 


88 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

that before this evening our triple existence 
played a slight if any part at all in yonr normal 
thoughts and preoccupations. I am right on 
that point, am I not ? Quite so! So much for 
that! 

“Nevertheless, it is not inconceivable that 
your present trespass on our domains may be 
due to something more, a little something more, 
than plain simple chance. . • . May I expati¬ 
ate : monsieur le vicomte, my grandson, found 
you some hours ago in an extraordinary place, 
to say the least. You were on your way from 
the Mort de Gauthier to the Grand Cap ? Be it 
so! Heaven preserve me from doubting your 
assertion in the slightest. And yet, and yet! 
The fact is that to reach the point where the 
vicomte found you, you must have proceeded 
with your back persistently and repeatedly 
turned upon your goal. The brush and under¬ 
growth on the mountains, I suppose, are by no 
means an easy problem for the wayfarer. To 
find one’s way about therein requires no little 
presence of mind. Permit me, nevertheless, to 
express my great surprise that a gentleman of 
such talent as I perceive in you, a gentleman 
trained in cartography as the members of your 
distinguished profession are, should have gone 
so far, so very very far, astray, and over such 
rough and trying ground! My honor, Monsieur! 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 89 

Must one assume that some will-o’-the-wisp, 
running the heath to lure poor travellers to de¬ 
struction, may have caught you in its spell! I 
suggest that hypothesis—one I am by no means 
loathe to accept. So I ask you, Monsieur le 
capitaine: Was it such a wandering fay—an 
evil fairy of the deadliest lineage—that brought 
you to our refuge?” 

He concluded, and fastened his eyes upon me. 

From the first syllable in his quaintly formal 
discourse, I had foreseen the point at which he 
was ultimately to arrive. So I was not by any • 
means taken unawares. His address, besides, 
had been a long one, and I had had plenty of 
time to make a supreme decision. When he 
came to his will-o’-the-wisp, my mind was quite 
made up. Gently my hand had made its way 
to my pocket and come to rest on my revolver. 

I had withdrawn my left leg from beneath my 
chair and stiffened the musclds of the calf. 
Eeady to spring forward and mix in, I now 
looked up and answered without a tremor: 

“ Monsieur, will you not take your own 
choice? You have suggested chance, foxfire, 
fairies. Have it as you will. I have no reply to ' 
make. On the contrary I have a number of 
questions to put to you!” 

He did not bat an eyelash, nor did the men to 
the left and right of him; but eventually a smile 




90 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


came to his lips and refused to fade as time went 
on. I got a good grip on my automatic. 

“I have no intention/’1 resumed, “of match¬ 
ing wits with you either! I expect immediate 
frankness on your part; for you will find it to 
your interest, I assure you, not to prevaricate by 
a syllable. Shall we then come to the point 
without evasion? I ask you, monsieur: are 
you by any chance acquainted with a young 
lady, Madame Madeleine de X ... by name? 

I gave her name in full, of course. 

The Marquis Gaspard, still smiling and more 
blandly if anything, nodded and waved his hand 
in emphasis of assent. 

“Very well,” said I. “I will go on. Mon¬ 
sieur, is it, or is it not, a fact, that this lady is 
a prisoner, at this moment, in this house?” 

The hoary head was now slowly raised, while 
the same wide opened hand sketched a gesture 
of perplexity. The smile puckered into some¬ 
thing expressive of incertitude. 

“A prisoner?” said he. “That is hardly the 
word, Monsieur. It is a fact that the lady in 
question is, and at this moment as you say, 
honoring us with her distinguished presence in 
this house. But if, as I can now hardly doubt, 
you chanced to meet her on your way, you must 
have been able to see for yourself, Monsieur, 
that she was coming alone and of her own ac- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


91 


cord, without constraint from anyone, to visit 
us under this roof where you wrongfully choose 
to call her a prisoner—as she is not, Monsieur, 
my word of honor !” 

Whereupon, he settled back into his chair, 
and his ghoulish, ironical, joyous face stood out 
more clearly against the bright brocade of the 
cushions. 

He had outmanoeuvred me in the exchange, 
and for a second or two I was disconcerted. 
Then, however, I regained the offensive. 

“As you will have it, Sir,” I said. “I was 
wrong, in my choice of words: I confess my 
error. Madame de X. ... is a free woman 
here; and, accordingly, there is no reason in the 
world why I should not be admitted to her pres¬ 
ence at once, to offer her my respectful homage. 
May I see her? I am one of her friends, the 
most intimate of her friends, I might say.” 

The; smiling, clean-shaven mouth relaxed into 
a broad laugh accentuated with little explosions 
of mirth in that queer falsetto: 

‘ 6 Oh, Monsieur le capitaine, you are telling us 
nothing we do not know, believe me, Sir. And 
rather, pray excuse the generous liberty I am 
taking in laughing at an affair such as yours 
and hers. I date from very long ago; and in 
my day, we were not so particular about secrecy 
in such matters. Let us pass on, pass on. I see 


92 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

that I have hurt your feelings by my inoppor¬ 
tune mirth. No offense, I assure you. Let us 
forget that whole side of the subject. You ask 
to interview Madame de X. . • . Nothing, in 
fact, would be easier; but unfortunately, 
Madame de X. . . . was feeling very tired, and 
went to bed, not long ago. She must now be in 
her first sleep; and I know you are far too much 
of a gentleman to disturb a lady under such con¬ 
ditions—to mention only the first of many ob¬ 
stacles to your satisfaction.” 

He was making fun of me; and my face 
burned hot with anger. 

“I insist,” said I, mastering my indignation. 
“I promise further not to disturb Madame de 
X. * . . if her first sleep is as deep and peaceful 
as you assert. But I insist on seeing her—and 
I have a right to, I should say, a right which I 
am certain you will not dispute.” 

At last the smile faded from the Marquis Gas- 
pard’s face. His eyes settled upon me search- 
ingly, as he replied in an earnest voice: 

“ Monsieur le capitaine, you are, rest quite 
assured, in a position to ask everything in this 
house, without finding anything denied you. 
Will you follow me!” 

He arose, walked to the door, opened it, and 
stepped across the reception hall. I followed 
in his footsteps in nervous astonishment. The 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 93 

other two men also rose and came along behind 
me. 

“Monsieur,” said the marquis softly, “you 
are now able to understand, I trust, why you 
were several times requested to make no noise 
in your apartment, which is so close to this 
one. . . 

I had guessed rightly, from the first. It was 
the room behind the door with the three long 
thick bolts, from under which the perfume so 
familiar to my nostrils had come — the fra¬ 
grance of muguet, of lilies-of-the-valley. And 
it was just such a room as I had imagined later 
—a naked, sparsely furnished chamber like the 
one they had given to me; and the same bed 
with fine sheets and silken coverlets. 

On that bed Madeleine was lying, her eyes 
closed, her lips white, her cheeks a leaden gray. 
They had told me the truth, also. She was 
asleep, deeply, too deeply, sunk in slumber, a 
strange, bloodless, icy slumber, nearer to death, 
perhaps, than to life. 

“MonsieuV will be mindful strictly of his 
promise,’’ cautioned the Marquis Gaspard. 
“You have satisfied yourself that Madame is 
sleeping, soundly sleeping. I may add that she 
is so greatly fatigued that the shock of a sudden 
awakening might be fatal to her. ...” 

The words were uttered in a grave, solemn 


94 


THE HOUSE OF, THE SECRET 

voice in striking contrast with the bantering 
tone he had hitherto adopted. 

From the very depths of my being a cold, re¬ 
lentless anger rose, as a hurricane of winter 
rises on an unsheltered plain. Drawing my pis¬ 
tol, I turned sharply upon the man, my enemy, 
and, my finger upon the unlocked trigger, I 
pressed the muzzle against his heart: 6 ‘ Peace ! 9 9 
I commanded, “Not a word from any one of 
you, or I shoot this fellow like a dog! Now, you 
speak up, you, Sir, you! And the truth, as you 
value your life! This woman! What are you 
doing with her here?” 

I had my eyes fixed upon those of the old 
man under my pistol. 

And these began to glow, to glow, to glow! 
What was happening to me? For a second I 
was blinded, dazzled, dazed. Then a sudden 
panic seized on me. I felt my prey slipping 
from my clutches. With my last ounce of will¬ 
power I pressed upon the trigger; but the 
weapon did not go off. The eyes of my prisoner 
had fallen slowly, quietly, deliberately from my 
eyes upon my hand. A vise-like grip fell upon 
my fingers, paralyzing, bruising, crushing them. 
The automatic slipped from my grasp and fell 
to the floor. . . . 

Then, in the same deep, solemn voice, coolly, 
calmly, as though nothing whatever had oc- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 95 

curred, the Marquis Gaspard answered my 
question: 

“What am I doing with this woman here! 
No query could be more natural, more legiti¬ 
mate, I am sure, Monsieur. I shall consider it 
a privilege to satisfy your curiosity. But per¬ 
haps Monsieur would prefer to return whence 
we came, to avoid any disturbance of Madame, 
in her slumbers.” 

My two arms were hanging loose at my sides. 
And my two legs were free. Nevertheless I felt 
bound hand and foot, unable to make the slight¬ 
est movement save such as my master, the 
Marquis Gaspard, commanded. ... A prison¬ 
er, body and soul, I obeyed in silence. I walked 
back toward the room we had left a few mo¬ 
ments before. As I stepped through the door 
of Madeleine’s chamber, I experienced a bitter 
longing to give her one more glance, one more, 
one more. 

But it was not vouchsafed me to turn my 
head. 


XVII 


M ONSIEUR le capitaine,” the Marquis 
Gaspard began, “you are in a position 
to ask anything of us here, without its being 
denied you—anything except one thing—but of 
this we shall speak later. For the moment you 
have been good enough to question me in refer¬ 
ence to Madame de X. . . . and I should con¬ 
sider myself rude indeed, w r ere I not to answer. 
The explanation may be longer than you expect, 
I dare say. That matters little! I am com¬ 
pletely at your service; I am ready to satisfy 
your every desire! Forgive me this preamble, 
which may seem long extended. And forgive 
me also if I chance to bore you with a narrative 
which also may seem irrelevant, but the neces¬ 
sity of w T hich I am sure you w r ill recognize as 
we proceed. ” 

He thought a moment. Then he drew his 
snuff-box, opened it, offered a pinch to the man 
on his right and another to the man on his left, 
took one himself, and finally continued: 

“Monsieur, I was born very far from here, 
in a little town in Germany. It was in the year 
of Our Lord. . . 


96 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


97 


The old man stopped. Count Francois had 
leapt from his armchair and extended a broad 
flat hand before his father as though begging 
that latter to reveal no more. The Marquis 
Gaspard fell silent, in fact, for as long as three 
seconds, in the meantime looking steadily at his 
son, his lips perked into an expression of in¬ 
dulgent irony. 

“I declare!” said he, eventually, in his queer 
falsetto voice, ‘ 6 that from you, Monsieur Fran¬ 
cois, at your age! Will you never grow up, Sir ? 
Imagine! Do you not suppose that' Monsieur 
le capitaine is already well initiated, too well 
initiated, into the Secret? What matters it 
whether he stop where he is now, or go on to 
learn the rest of it?” 

He turned toward me again and repeated: 

“ Monsieur, I was born in a little town in 
Germany, as I had the honor of informing you. 
It was at Eckernfoerde, not far from Schleswig, 
in the year of Our Lord, One Thousand, Seven 
Hundred and Thirty Three! 1733! Yes, Mon¬ 
sieur ! 

“ Today is the twenty-second of December, 
1908. Figure it up yourself. I am one hundred 
and seventy-five years old! Don’t be too much 
surprised, Monsieur. Such is the simple fact, 
and it will seem simpler still, as I progress with 
my explanation. If we were more at leisure and 


98 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


your curiosity should extend that far, it would 
be a great pleasure for me to give you a detailed 
story of my life; not, of course, of my whole 
life—that you would find a rambling, discon¬ 
nected narrative, I am sure—but the more in¬ 
teresting moments, my first fifty years, let us 
say. That, however, would take us far afield, 
and the night, though a winter’s one, would 
scarcely suffice for such a tale. Let us keep to 
essentials, therefore. 

“My father was a gentleman, a soldier in the 
service of His Majesty King Christian VI of 
Denmark. He had played a distinguished role 
in the wars of the preceding reign; but his posi¬ 
tion was not brilliant at the court of this Prince, 
who was so wholly engrossed with the gentler 
arts of letters, science and society. All Europe, 
for that matter, was enjoying a period of quiet; 
and my father had to make the best of the situa¬ 
tion, however hard it bore on him, a profes¬ 
sional isoldier. But the peace was of short dura¬ 
tion, as the event proved; and I was just turning 
my seventh year when a new conflict broke out, 
with Austria, Prussia, and France leading 
scores of those little kingdoms which were for¬ 
ever fishing in the troubled waters of Continen¬ 
tal politics. However, Denmark was one of the 
few small states to keep her weapons sheathed. 

“Under this disappointment my father 




THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 99 

chafed—refused to put up with it, in fact. He 
decided to go abroad to live. 

“We moved first to Paris, then to Versailles, 
where Louis XV welcomed us cordially. A 
brilliant career was opening before my father, 
whose bravery in action soon attracted royal 
attention, when, on the tenth of May, 1745, just 
as the famous battle of Fontenoy was develop¬ 
ing into a French triumph, an English bullet 
laid him low. To the victory my parent’s gal¬ 
lantry had contributed not a little, and that, too, 
under the very eyes of the King himself. The 
latter, anxious that such distinguished service 
should not pass unrecognized, called me to his 
presence, and there, on the battle field, elevated 
me to the rank of royal page. 

‘ ‘ This, Monsieur, was the beginning of my 
real life as a man—a life, I may add, that was 
for long carefree and joyous. I can still re¬ 
member the placid delights of those years which 
all France enjoyed under the Treaty of 1747. 
At Court, especially, there was one round of fes¬ 
tivals, revelries and intrigues of love, wherein 
I played my part as well as the next one; and 
I may even say that if today you see before you 
in my person a hermit, a man, at least, inclined 
to solitude, the fact must be attributed to the 
immense, the delicate felicity in which I passed 
my early days, a happiness whose sheer perfec- 



> >» 


100 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

tion has disgusted me forever with the banal 
pleasures which you people of this modern age 
could offer me if I cared for them. But why 
arouse in you the melancholy yearning for 
those golden days, which I feel? I will pass 
on, and pray forgive me if I have dwelt too 
much upon them as it is. I come, then, and 
tardily enough, to the main point. 

“I said, Monsieur, that after 1745, from the 
date, that is, of my father’s death on the field 
of honor, I was a page at the Court of Louis 
XV. In that capacity I was still serving five 
years later, in the year 1750. Indeed, it was 
my honor and my pleasure as a royal page, to 
escort the Marechal de Belle Isle one day into 
the presence of His Majesty; the marshall, in 
turn, leading by the hand a rather handsome 
gentleman whose name was quite unknown to 
me. 

“ ‘Sire,’ the marshall began—(How his silky 
wig shone, as he made obeissance! And to me 
how glorious his purple coat seemed, thrown 
up in back by the studded scabbard of his 
sword!)—‘Sire, I have the honor to present to 
your Majesty, as your Majesty deigned to com¬ 
mand, Monsieur le Comte de Saint Germain, 
who, beyond all dispute, is the most aged 
gentleman of your kingdom.’ 

“My eyes, I remember, turned upon the 



C i C 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 101 


count in question. And, quite to the contrary 
of his introduction, he seemed to me a man in 
the flower of youth. If he were a day older 
than thirty, there was not the slightest reason 
in the world to suspect so. 

4 ‘It is surely not my place, Monsieur le capi- 
taine, to play the school-master for a man of 
your evident education. I am certain you are 
familiar with all that our historians have said 
about that extraordinary, that superhuman indi¬ 
vidual, known to successive generations, as the 
Count of Saint Germain, the Marquis of Mon- 
ferrat, Count Bellamye, Signor Eotondo, Count 
Tzarogy, the Reverend Father Aymar, and so 
on. No, it was rather out of a sense of filial 
regard than out of any desire to enlighten you, 
that I forgot myself so far as to recount the 
detailed story of my first and fortunate en¬ 
counter with this personage whom I was later 
to revere as father, mother, master and friend, 
all in one. To be sure, the intimacy between 
him and me was not the outcome of this first 
meeting only. In the ten years following, be¬ 
tween 1750 and 1760, that is, the Count of Saint 
Germain was one of the most frequent guests 
at the Court of Versailles, and I continued as 
gentleman-in-waiting to the King. 

“Thereafter intrigues and jealousies had 
their play, and the Count was no longer wel- 


102 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


come. Unable by that time to live apart from 
the company of that distinguished genius, I 
determined to seek him out in his banishment. 
For long my search was vain. Free Masonry, 
of which he was the secret General and Grand 
Master, was keeping him in hiding—as I later 
learned, in Moscow, where he was plotting 
a sort of revolution. In despair at last of ever 
finding him, I abandoned my quest; and, since 
now the thought of life in France had become 
intolerable to me, I decided to return to my old 
Danish home, establish a peaceful hearthfire 
there, and cultivate the memory of the prodig¬ 
ious friend whom I had lost. 

4 4 This I did. I went back to Eckernfoerde, to 
my ancestral mansion which had not been occu¬ 
pied for fully twenty-four years. 

4 4 It was now the year 1764. Denmark was 
still at peace, or virtually so. One single army 
indeed was campaigning in the Duchy of Meck¬ 
lenburg, under the command of a young fellow, 
some twenty years of age, who gave promise of 
a most brilliant career in arms—the Landgrave 
Charles of Hesse-Cassel, I mean, whom King 
Christian VII was soon to nominate as his 
Lieutenant- General. 

4 4 The circumstance arose eventually whereby 
I was called upon to pay homage to His High¬ 
ness, during a visit which he made, in the inter- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 103 

val between two seasons in the field, to a palace 
of his at Eckernfoerde. Imagine my delight, 
Monsieur, imagine my boundless joy, when I 
discovered, seated on his Highness’s right hand 
and in the place of honor and confidence, the 
man whom I had everywhere been looking for 
and had given up for lost. The landgrave him¬ 
self wept at sight of my emotion. Saint Ger¬ 
main was then living under the name of 
Tzarogy, dividing his time between the general, 
whom he was advising as privy councilor, and 
divers other lords and gentlemen to whom he 
was lending the assistance of his marvelous 
science. Prince Orlof, was among these, I may 
mention, and His Highness, the Margrave 
Charles Alexander of Anspach. . . . 

“My own disappointments, alas, were not yet 
at an end, however; for, many times, I was 
still to be deprived of the society of this being 
who was growing from hour to hour more pre¬ 
cious and more necessary to me. But finally 
my master ceased his wanderings. Prince 
Charles became, as I said, lieutenant-general 
to the new king, Christian VII; but, though war 
now broke out between Norway (a vassal state * 
of ours) and Sweden, the new marshall was fre¬ 
quently at leisure; and this he spent in secret 
labors at which my master and I often assisted 
him. Fifteen years thus passed, years as 


104 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


solemnly and earnestly happy as the days I had 
spent in France had been wildly joyous. Then 
a horrible catastrophe came to destroy this long 
and perfect bliss. I referred casually, some 
moments ago, to the extreme youth my master 
had succeeded in preserving despite his un¬ 
measurable age. That youth now suddenly be¬ 
gan to depart from him. 

“I noticed the change, without daring for a 
time to make mention of it to him. But his 
health soon broke down to such a remarkable 
extent that I could not endure my silence. One 
day I threw myself at the count’s feet and beg¬ 
ged him to be more attentive to his well-being, 
indeed to make use of his own science in his 
own behalf. To my relief he took no offense at 
my presumptuousness, and lifting me tenderly 
to my feet, he said—in a deep sepulchral voice 
that froze my blood: 

“ ‘Gaspard, there are diseases against which 
the science to which you advise appeal is of no 
avail. My wisdom is helpless, for example, 
against a secret cancer of which my heart is 
bleeding: against a will I have—a determina¬ 
tion on my part—not to be well again.’ 

i ‘So speaking, he opened before my eyes a 
bejewelled medallion which he was wearing 
about his neck; and in it, fastened to the gold, 
I perceived a ring of braided hair. 



THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 105 


“ ‘Gaspard,’ he continued, ‘I am dying! My 
mistake was in trying to immortalize, not my 
maturer manhood, but my frivolous youth. 
Had I been a wiser man I should have assured 
—by a wrinkle or two, at least, and a few white 
hairs—this mortal envelop of mine against the 
shafts of love; in which case it might surely 
have become eternal. Now, when you have 
wholly acquired my Secret, profit by this mis¬ 
take of mine, and, as my heir and continuator, 
show yourself worthy of the inheritance! ’ 

“A week later he passed away. To his friend, 
the landgrave, he bequeathed his note-books, 
manuscripts, and talismans (all of which were 
so much Greek to that well-meaning warrior). 
To me he left what he called his ‘Secret.’ 

“Monsieur le capitaine, when I began this 
account of my life, it was to the subject of this 
Secret, my legitimate heritage, that I intended 
eventually to come. I have arrived at last. 
Again I crave your pardon for my great pro¬ 
lixity. But without this long preamble I feared 
you would not really understand. Now, how¬ 
ever, there is no reason in the world why I 
should not satisfy your curiosity, and, without 
falsehood, reticence or evasion, answer your 
query as to what I, my son, and my grandson 
here are doing with the girl you love, with 
Madame Madeleine de X. . . 


XVIII 


O NCE more, tlie Marquis Gaspard drew his 
snuff-box and opened it. But this time he 
did not close it again. He held it wide open in 
the palm of his hand without taking his pinch 
of snuff. 

“Monsieur,” he resumed, “I am far from 
being a philosopher. On the subject of meta¬ 
physics I am quite as unpretentious as you. 
Nevertheless, you and I know as much assured¬ 
ly as any man in France about the real nature 
of that undefinable thing called Life. I say ‘as 
much/ though I might well say ‘as little’; for 
no one ever has known, or ever will know, any¬ 
thing really about Life. At the very most we 
are at liberty to guess at a few of the phe¬ 
nomena which accompany the existence of liv¬ 
ing beings on earth and which disappear on the 
advent of Death. My master, the Count of 
Saint Germain, never deluded himself on this 
point. Once he discovered the path we may 
follow with security, he contented himself with 
not departing from it by an inch, though the 
path itself he traversed in Seven League Boots, 

106 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 107 

one might say, burning a very long candle at 
both ends! In his case, there was not, as com¬ 
monplace minds have stupidly imagined, any 
trace of sorcery or magic. With him it was a 
matter of solid science, acquired by patient ex¬ 
periment—a matter of mentality, of genius, if 
you will—nothing more, nothing less, than that. 
The Secret, the Truth which he discovered, and 
which he bequeathed to me when he had tired 
of using it, the Secret of Long Life, the Secret 
of Never Dying—is a purely natural, a purely 
scientific affair. You yourself can be judge, 
Monsieur le capitaine. 

“Not that I shall pretend to explain, to dem¬ 
onstrate, this Secret to you with the rigor 
mathematicians and physicists require in their 
sciences. My master might have presumed so 
much. For myself, I feel quite too ignorant 
even to venture on such a task. But, after all, 
what does that matter? All you want to know 
is what your friend, Madame Madeleine de X. 
. . ., has to do with it. Am I not right, Mon¬ 
sieur ? 

“Very well, Sir! To the point! We, Mon¬ 
sieur le capitaine, you, I, all of us, considered 
as living beings, are compounds of elements, so 
many bundles of atoms, or cells, which latter 
come to life in us, live their lives, and die, to be 
replaced, in the end, by other similar elements 


108 THE HOUSE OP, THE SECRET 

engendered of those before them. Trustworthy 
scientists have declared that the bodies we have 
today do not contain a single particle of the sub¬ 
stances of which they were composed ten years 
ago. This incessant transformation, this con¬ 
stant renewal of ourselves, constitutes one of 
the distinctive traits of the Life to which I re¬ 
ferred a moment since. 

“This reconstruction, however, does not take 
place in the same way in every creature, nor 
in the same way at all periods in one individual 
existence. When a child grows, for example, 
each old atom is replaced by several new ones. 
In old age, on the contrary, many atoms dis¬ 
appear while only a few successors take their 
places. Death occurs when the departing ele¬ 
ments are no longer replaced at all. 

“Monsieur le capitaine, this was the special 
fact which arrested my master’s attention, and 
meditation on which revealed to him in the end 
the Secret I have the honor to be discussing 
with you—instead of sleeping, as I might nor¬ 
mally and reasonably be doing, in some coffin 
already rotted from the years. And this 
Secret. * . * 

“I will reveal it to you, Sir, and without 
flinching, dangerous as that may be. You, Mon¬ 
sieur, must I again remind you, are in a position 
to ask anything of us and always be contented 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 109 


—anything save one thing, of course; but this 
one thing is not the Secret. So then. . . . 

“If we grow old, or if we die, the reason is 
that our atoms, our cells, have lost the power 
to engender others, the others which are essen¬ 
tial to the prolongation of life—the reason is 
that our aged bodies have become inept at a 
task which our youthful constitutions perform 
at play, as it were, without effort. Well then, 
why not pass on a burden too heavy for our 
years to some other body, whose youth and 
vigor will do double duty—for itself and us— 
and quite willingly besides, not even perceiv¬ 
ing the extra labor imposed upon it? 

“I am not sure than any objection, any rea¬ 
sonable objection, can be raised to that. My 
master thought not, at least; and I am of his 
opinion. So are my son and my grandson here. 
And I take it, personal presumptuousness quite 
aside, that when it is a case of unanimity among 
four competent judges, all old men, and conse¬ 
quently the wiser from an experience not un¬ 
usual but quite unprecedented, our opinion 
should be respected. I venture to hope, Mon¬ 
sieur le capitaine, that you yourself will share 
it. . • • 

“Madame Madeleine de X. . . ., your friend, 
is here of her own free will, or virtually of her 
own free will, for the purpose of cooperating, 



110 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


generously, in our profit—in the task, that is, 
of rejuvenating our aged substances which, 
without her, could not recover of them¬ 
selves. . . 

In the pale hand of the Marquis Gaspard the 
snuff-box cover snapped, with a sharp though 
barely audible click; and he returned it to his 
pocket, this time without remembering to take 
his pinch of snuff. 


» 






XIX 


T WAS still seated facing my three hosts, and 
*■* nothing seemed changed between ns. To 
all appearances, I ^was quite at liberty: no 
shackles, no bonds, impeded me; I was free to 
get np, walk around, make a fight of it. In 
reality an irresistible force, a crushing weight, 
had settled on my members. I was paralyzed 
in the most complete, the most atrocious sense 
of the word. To save my life, to save my soul, 
to save the woman I loved, I should not, even 
at the command of God himself, have been able 
to lift a finger or wink an eyelid. 

The Marquis Gaspard finished his blood¬ 
curdling reply without interruption from me. 
I listened on in silence; my face failing quite 
to show the unspeakable horror convulsing 
through my inner self. 

Now this man—this beast—of prey was silent 
for a moment. At times in the placid atmos¬ 
phere of that room I had the creeping sensa¬ 
tion of wings whirring about me—the weird 
ghoulish flight of vampires. 

ill 


112 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

Suddenly tlie Marquis Gaspard spoke up 
anew: 

“ Monsieur le capitaine, I am inclined to sup¬ 
pose that now your curiosity is satisfied; but 
should there remain some shadow of doubt in 
your mind still, should there be any point I have 
not yet made entirely clear, please consider me 
at your disposal quite. In my opinion—I know 
it is but a humble one—it were best all around 
that we understand each other perfectly, leav¬ 
ing nothing, absolutely nothing, in the dark. 
You will be patient, therefore, if I supplement 
my recent explanation with a few observations 
in detail—and kindly pardon me, if I seem to do 
all the talking. For that matter, I do not insist. 
You may be bored insufferably for instance. 
In that event you are quite at liberty to make 
your escape—you might go to bed again, for 
one thing. The narrative I have just completed 
seemed to me essential to an accurate under¬ 
standing of the facts. On the other hand, what 
I was minded to tell you now is not wholly in¬ 
dispensable. I should not be in the least of¬ 
fended if you thought best not to hear it. . . . 

“To proceed then, Madame Madeleine de X. 
. . , a friend of yours, is here, as you now know, 
to work, with the best of her soul and body, for 
our benefit; and specifically for the purpose of 
renewing, of rejuvenating, the physical sub- 




THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 113 


stance of ns three. Now I know how yon love 
this lady; and I am qnite ready to assnme that 
you would be interested in hearing more of the 
marvelous things she does for us, and for which 
we are indeed her debtors. I should feel remiss 
in concealing anything on such a delicate matter. 

“ Monsieur le capitaine, I shall not inflict 
upon you a review I might make—dull, dry, 
wearisome it would almost certainly be—of the 
efforts men—and by men, I mean physicians 
more particularly—have made to transfuse a 
life that is young into bodies that are old. I 
use the word ‘transfuse,’ my mind reverting to 
a crude experiment resorted to from time to 
time (with no success worth mentioning) and 
which consists in a simple transfer of blood 
from a strong man to a weaker one. Folderol! 
Balderdash! Charlatanry! What else could 
you expect from doctors of medicine, so called? 
Among donkeys your physician is the prize ass! 
And I cannot understand how your age, Mon¬ 
sieur le capitaine, the Twentieth Century of 
Our Lord’s era, can take so seriously these 
fakirs who, in my time, I assure you, were ap¬ 
praised at a far juster worth. 

“That, however, is beside the point. I need 
not remind you—you must surely have guessed 
as much yourself—that my master made no use 
of medical devices in arriving at his astonish- 



114 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


ing results. His pride it was to be a chemist, 
not to say an alchemist, as he would have said. 
He was no mere horse-doctor. He was no mere 
barber. His discerning eye was fixed on the 
mysterious depths of the test-tube, not on the 
point of a brutal butcher-knife. And he dis¬ 
covered. . . . 

“Just when, I do not know. It is well au¬ 
thenticated that the Count de Saint Germain 
lived several centuries, a fact explainable only 
on the assumption that the Secret of Long Life 
must be of very ancient origin. I stress this 
fact, for the glory of my master is but enhanced 
thereby. Our Secret, indeed, has a number of 
curious analogies with the electric or magnetic 
appliances the invention of which is the glory 
of the present age. Just consider then how far 
ahead of his time this great man was! But in 
speaking of electricity I am not, believe me, 
thinking of the primitive tricks that were known 
even to men of old. No, my master did not 
waste his time in drawing sparks from a cat’s 
tail nor in making bull-frogs dance to music. 
But he did manipulate the philosopher’s stone 
most handily, and he was able to dispense with 
mercury when he chose to plate with silver or 
with gold. I remember that many a time, just 
in play one might say, he would amuse us by 
transferring the metal of one object to the sur- 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 115 


face of another object of a different metal; and 
this he did by means of electric batteries, of 
which, precisely, he was an independent in¬ 
ventor; thongh he used other processes still, 
qnite as far from being snpernatnral as they 
were kindred to the marvelous. Bnt he did not 
stop at so little, for these things were mere 
child’s play to him. I saw him, with my own 
eyes, one day, take a branch from a rose-bnsh 
with two roses on it and one bud, not to mention 
the leaves, and transport the whole in some 
mysterious way through a thick partition, in 
which the doors were sealed, into an adjoining 
room. Little by little the rose-branch wasted 
away before our eyes and as gradually reas¬ 
sembled in another place. That experiment im¬ 
pressed me, I can tell you, Sir; though the 
Count assured me there was nothing very re¬ 
markable about it, since any substance could be 
disintegrated for a certain short length of time 
into incredibly minute atoms which made light 
of passing through such coarsely textured ob¬ 
stacles as wooden doors, or brick and plaster 
walls. ‘The time will come,’ he used to say, 
‘when matter and movement, which, moreover, 
are identical, can be exteriorized, much as 
smells, sounds, or light are normally at present.’ 

“It would be scant flattery to your acumen, 
Monsieur le capitame, were I now to fear you 


116 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


had not guessed the general method of our 
Secret. Just as a mass of pure gold, suitably 
moistened in an appropriate liquid and acted 
upon by a current from an electric battery of 
an appropriate force, may be broken up and 
distributed toward a mass of plain iron so 
placed as to be receptive of such action, so a 
living creature, likewise placed in a favorable 
environment and subjected to a magnetic energy 
of proper strength, gives up its cells in certain 
numbers and transmits them to another living 
creature stationed at a point where they may be 
received and assimilated. There, Monsieur le 
capitaine, you have our ‘process’—if I may bor¬ 
row a term from the jargon of your modern 
alchemists. 

“You must be aware by this time, Sir, that 
I am seeking to hide nothing from you, that I 
come down indeed to very perilous details. I 
will go even so far as to add that the conditions 
favorable for this operation may be found in 
any room whatever, provided such room be 
tightly closed, perfectly silent, and darkened 
to a half light; and provided also, it be laid on 
a line from North to South. This latter specifi¬ 
cation is necessary in order to keep at sufficient 
tension (by drawing on the magnetic forces of 
the Earth itself) the magnetic current which, 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 117 


for its part, any strong and wilful man can find 
in his own physical being when he so pleases. 

“Now, Monsieur le capitaine, I dare hope you 
have been furnished with all the facts that you 
desired to know?” 


XX 

T HE invincible, all-powerful clutch which 
fastened me helpless to my chair, seemed 
to have paralyzed my tongue and some of the 
functions even of my brain. I was in full pos¬ 
session of consciousness. I could still think 
clearly and logically; and I could feel—what 
despair indeed was mine! But volition, the 
power to act, had left me; and my combative¬ 
ness, also, my rage, my fury against these drink¬ 
ers of human blood, these assassins of the girl 
I loved, were weakening, vacillating, melting 
away into a hazy, vaporous, indistinct emotion. 

The Marquis Gaspard, after a pause, was 
again speaking, with that same obtrusive, 
labored, sinister urbanity. 

“Monsieur le capitaine,” said he, “at the 
risk of seeming intolerably repetitious, I must 
here revert to something I have mentioned at 
least twice before, the fact, to wit, that every¬ 
thing under this roof is at your beck and call, 
without fear or refusal, save one single thing. 
Eventually, alas, we shall be constrained to 
broach the painful subject of that single thing, 
which, to our extreme regret, we shall have per¬ 
ns 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 119 

force to deny yon. Will yon not, therefore, 
carefully examine yonr mind in all its nooks 
and corners the better to acquaint ns—and as 
specifically as possible—with all yonr desires? 
My honor as a gentleman, they will be satisfied, 
if the satisfaction be within onr power.’’ 

He fell silent, and looked up as though ex¬ 
pecting me to speak. Indeed, with the final 
syllables of his last phrase, a curious, and very 
complex, sensation began coursing through me. 
At first, it was a sort of tingling in all my veins 
and arteries, where my blood seemed to be mov¬ 
ing faster as my heart beat with a gradually 
increasing force. Then I began to understand: 
little by little, by imperceptible degrees, the con¬ 
trol over me was slackening; an influence which 
my mind could not comprehend was lifting the 
weight that had settled on my limbs. I was not 
free, by any means; but neither was I completely 
helpless as before; so that, when the Marquis 
Gaspard repeated his question, directly, this 
time, and without so many mellifluous detours 
—“Monsieur, what do you wish?”—I was able 
to answer easily, and with absolute sincerity. 

And answer I did—an answer that expressed 
the deepest, most ardent feelings in my heart: 
“There is nothing I wish, Monsieur. Kill me, 
as you have killed the girl I love. But kill me 
quickly: I am ready!” 



120 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

In reply the Marquis Gaspard, as he had so 
often done before, laughed a laugh in that queer 
falsetto voice of his; and therewith, on the 
instant, the mysterious weight came down again 
upon my shoulders, while the clutch tightened 
again upon my nerves and muscles. Once more 
I was a prisoner, securely bound, my tongue 
clinging limp and lifeless to my teeth. Inert, 
body and soul, I felt the ironical voice of my 
conqueror again laving me with its scalding 
mirth. 

“My word, Monsieur le capitaine! What are 
you dreaming of? Badly indeed I must have 
expressed myself! Are you not taking me for 
some feu Cartouche of the good old days, for 
some Monsieur de Paris, perhaps ? Hah! Hah!” 

And this time, as he laughed, he shrugged his 
shoulders in affected resignation; and I found a 
certain ironic exaggeration in the sweep of the 
hand with which he again took out his snuff-box. 

“Well,” he continued, “I can see there is no 
help for it. Another bit of glossing will be far 
from wasted here. Your pardon, Monsieur le 
capitaine, if I, who should not, remind you, that 
the three men you see before you are three of 
the most reputable gentlemen of the Kingdom 
of France. This right hand of mine was never 
soiled with a drop of blood. Count Frangois 
here, born in 1770, grew up in the days of your 


.THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 121 

Revolution and was a ‘philosopher’ of the Jean 
Jacques style in the days when Rousseau was 
all the rage. Believe me, what he saw of the 
France of that time, a nation gone entirely mad, 
and bent on turning into a slaughter-house, dis¬ 
gusted him forever with Samsons and guillo¬ 
tines. As for the Vicomte Antoine, he came 
into the world in season to figure among those 
enfcmts du siecle who borrowed the pen of Al¬ 
fred de Musset to wring the hearts of an admir¬ 
ing world with words of tender lassitude and 
languishing despair. Poor makings for a can¬ 
nibal, in truth, monsieur! No, I can see the 
effects of the reading people do in these modern 
days. Too many novels, too many novels! A 
bad diet, I take it, for impressionable, imagin¬ 
ative minds. Who said a word here about kill¬ 
ing anybody? The idea of putting you—or 
Madame de X. . . .—to death had not occurred 
to us in the remotest degree. Count Frangois, 
as I may have intimated, has a bit of the moral¬ 
ist under his skin. Give him half a chance and 
he starts preaching at you! Well, he will ex¬ 
plain, if you choose to ask him, and have the 
patience to bear the consequences, how wholly 
improper it would be for men possessing the 
Secret of Long Life, for Men who really know 
what Living means, to deprive simple ordinary 
people of any portion of that brief course which 


122 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

leads them unfailingly and miserably to the 
Hereafter. We have the Powers Above to 
thank, Monsieur, that our Secret, the Secret, 
makes (barring a few chance exceptions, so in¬ 
frequent as to be negligible), no cruel demands 
upon us. So far, Monsieur le capitaine, I have 
added a full century to my appointed years. Be¬ 
lieve me, none of those additional days have I 
stolen from the lives of others. No, we are 
not of those who kill! Can you, Monsieur, a 
soldier, say as much? Many young people, to 
be sure, boys and girls alike, have passed 
through our laboratory. That I cannot deny. 
Nor could I swear that they departed thence 
without leaving something of their ultimate vi¬ 
tality. But, at the worst, their loss was a very 
slight, a very unappreeiable one, Monsieur le 
capitaine; and this loss I might condone with 
the reflection that a single extra day of life for 
an ancient sage like me ought surely be worth 
some sacrifice—a sacrifice, I repeat, quite ex¬ 
ceptional in point of fact, since all of the con¬ 
tributors on whom we draw, having once accom¬ 
plished their generous task, return safe, sound 
and happy to their normal pursuits. Your 
friend, for instance, Madame de X. . . ., is by 
no means so far gone as you imagine. When, 
tomorrow evening, she goes back to her home 
from another trip to . . . Beaulieu, no one 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 123 

will take the trouble to observe that she is 
lighter by some pounds than at the time she 
went away—a relatively few ounces of blood, 
and bone, and flesh, which we have claimed 
from her youthful substance. Concede the fact 
yourself, Monsieur le capitaine: your indigna¬ 
tion was a bit excessive. So now, I suppose, 
we are at the end of our misunderstandings. 
From what you have just said I gather simply 
that you have no particular desires except, I 
dare say, an early solution of your Adventure. 
In the latter case, Monsieur, we might proceed. 
What do you say? Shall we look for such a 
solution in a friendly spirit . . . together V 9 
Again the iron grasp upon my being was 
loosened for the fraction of a second; I was per¬ 
mitted to nod in acquiescence. 


XXI 


rpHE Marquis Gaspard hitched about in his 
chair; and, as his body lay back in the deep 
cushions, I noticed, on either of the arms of 
gilded wood, a small withered hand, the desic¬ 
cated skin of which, faultlessly manicured, was 
as glossy as ancient ivory. The Count Fran¬ 
cois and the Vicomte Antoine, whether of their 
own accord or in imitation of their respective 
parent and grand-parent, relaxed into similar 
comfortable positions, their hands also, broader 
and less wasted, likewise resting on their carved 
chair-arms—which they quite encircled, what 
with fingers and palm. I could not help observ¬ 
ing these details; for a clear, definite conviction 
mysteriously seized upon my mind that those 
talons, of such innocent and genteel exteriors, 
had their nails somehow buried in every part 
of my tortured flesh. 

The marquis was again speaking: “Mon¬ 
sieur le capitaine, I consider you an intelligent 
man; and I will not do you the injustice of sup¬ 
posing for an instant that you have failed to 
divine the nature of the restriction which I 
have always been careful to introduce expressly 

124 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 125 

into all my offers of service and hospitality. 
The time has come—believe me, I am more 
pained than yon thereat—for ns to tonch more 
directly npon this restriction. As I have re¬ 
peatedly assured yon, Monsieur le capitaine, 
our house is wholly, entirely, absolutely at your 
disposal; but you will understand, knowing 
what you know, that you will never be allowed 
to depart from it. Everything here is yours for 
the asking, everything! Everything save one, 
single thing: your freedom! 

“In thus detaining you against your will, our 
sorrow, Monsieur le capitaine, knows no bounds, 
no bounds whatever. I say that in behalf of 
the three of us; for I know that the count here, 
and the vicomte, feel the same regret as I. But 
what else can we do % In our heart of hearts, 
we regard ourselves as absolutely not responsi¬ 
ble for any of the consequences that may result 
from your visit to our abode. Chance, and 
your own—very pardonable—curiosity, are to 
blame. A thousand to one chance—and it went 
against you! It was your ridiculously unrea¬ 
sonable misfortune to have seen last evening 
something that no mortal man could be allowed 
to see: Madame de X. . . on the Col de la 
Mort de Gauthier. But your bad luck did not 
end even there. In your rambling search for 
your lady, it was your second mischance to 





126 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

come dangerously near our refuge. From that 
point on we were helpless. Knowing, perhaps, 
that we exist, knowing perhaps where we live, 
knowing perhaps the kind of visits we are occa¬ 
sionally obliged to receive, you know far too 
much, Monsieur le capitaine; for the Secret 
preserves its efficacy only so long as it remains 
a Secret. It must, by nature, be the exclusive 
appanage of a few Living Men. Let the gene¬ 
rality of Mortals even suspect its existence, and 
it is finished. Our Secret, you see, Monsieur, 
is an essentially aristocratic one. Its exercise 
presupposes the subservience of a great num¬ 
ber of inferior creatures, who must endure labor, 
suffering and fatigue for the profit and welfare 
of a few master beings. I need not remind you 
that the humanitarian prejudices, the demo¬ 
cratic sentimentality, of the present age would 
not take kindly to such a notion. Your poli¬ 
ticians, who flatter and fawn on a vulgar demos 
more vilely than any of my comrades, the royal 
pages, ever courted the Roi Bien Aime, would 
tear their hair in oratorio indignation if they 
ever discovered that for the past hundred and 
seventy-five years one man has been allowing 
himself to avoid death in defiance of all equali- 
tarian principles. So much so, Monsieur le 
capitaine, that we three, among the most well- 
intentioned gentlemen in the Kingdom, as I 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 127 


boasted not long since, find ourselves obliged 
to hide like brigands in this out-of-the-way spot, 
and behind a labyrinth of boulders, precipices 
and thickets certain to keep all intruders away. 

“In the circumstances, our embarrassment 
should not be hard to understand. You have 
happened on us, Monsieur le capitaine, much as 
a wasp might strike into a spider’s web, tear¬ 
ing everything to pieces. If you were left at 
liberty to return whence you came, carrying 
the shreds of our Secret in your pockets, it 
would be the jolly end of us, now would it not? 
I am speaking, as you well realize, without a 
trace of exaggeration. 

“Consider a moment, Monsieur le capitaine! 
Try to imagine the prodigies of prudence and 
cunning we have had to perform, the limitless 
sacrifices we have had to make, to ensure our 
safety and our independence in the various 
countries where we have had to live. For one 
thing, we have always been moving from this 
place to that. The business of a Wandering 
Jew would be child’s play compared with our 
many flights and migrations. But the discom¬ 
forts attendant on such things have been the 
least of our troubles. Monsieur le capitaine, 
when my master died, I was still a comparative¬ 
ly young man, and Frangois here was a mere 
boy. His mother I had married twenty years 


128 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


before, in France—still young 1 and beautiful 
sbe was, and as strict in her loyalty to her 
husband as conjugal happiness demands—nei¬ 
ther too much nor too little, that is. I loved 
her dearly; and my great joy, at first, was to 
think of taking her along with me to share the 
new destiny I had in store. But then I reflected: 
was it wise, was it prudent, to entrust to a wo¬ 
man a Secret on the keeping of which depended 
whether I should come to be another Count de 
Saint Germain, and perhaps, indeed, an older 
and a more learned one? Could I stake, on a 
female’s discretion and wisdom, the outcome 
of a game to last for years and years, when 
winning would make us literally immortal, and 
a single uncautious word would spell certain 
ruin? Alas! You understand: I could not! 
I submitted accordingly, Monsieur le capitaine, 
to the torture of seeing the mother of my only 
child perish before my very eyes, while, all 
along, I could have preserved forever the smile 
of her lips and the sweetness of her caresses. 
Such a price the continuance of our lives as 
Living Men exacted. And twenty years there¬ 
after, my son, in his turn, to prevent the Secret 
of Long Life from becoming entangled in skirts, 
sacrificed his wife. Such facts will enable you, 
Monsieur le capitaine, to estimate the value of 
this formidable knowledge, which we have pre- 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 129 

ferred to two lives no less precious, you must 
admit, than your own. I have said two lives, 
with a view to a reasonable statistic. There 
may have been more. A few moments ago you 
saw how pale and weakened your friend, 
Madame de X. . . ., appeared. It is no simple 
matter to give up some eight or ten pounds of 
living substance to another person. . . . Then, 
there are the accidents to take account of. . . . 
We have had such lamentable occurrences to 
regret, unfortunately . . . though very few, 
very very few. ... In any event, you can see 
that the ransom of our lives must be a heavy 
one, though a capricious Circumstance has de¬ 
creed that others should pay it for us. . . . 
Alas, Monsieur le capitaine! You surely will 
not be surprised if it has fallen to you now to 
assume a portion of the cost. . . . 

“You must, in short, pay something; and I 
am certain I can rely, in such a matter, on your 
liberality as a gentleman of parts. . . . What 
puzzles me rather is the kind of currency that 
might be passed between us. . . 

At this point he broke off, and looked first at 
the one and then at the other of his two com¬ 
panions, who, first one and then the other, 
wagged their heads in doubt. A moment or so 
must thus have passed. 

“Monsieur le capitaine/’ the marquis sud- 


130 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


denly resumed; “if we were living a hundred 
years earlier, in 1808 instead of 1908, our diffi¬ 
culties would be easily superable. For, I must 
tell you: this is not the first time we have been 
embarrassed by the inconvenient presence with 
us of an intruder—living or dead as the case 
may be. Forgive my using such a term for 
you; it is accurate, however seemingly dis¬ 
courteous. Yes, I remember, to mention only 
one such episode, a poor Neapolitan who, some 
eighty odd years ago, died in our house most 
inopportunely. We were living in Naples at the 
time. The police service of the Bourbons was 
a pretty ramshackle affair; none the less I was 
afraid of considerable annoyance, should it ever 
occur to the Gentlemen of the Guard to ask how 
that particular person happened to be found 
dead so far from his own home. I decided to 
anticipate any indiscrete inquisitiveness. A 
felucca from Malta happened to be lying in 
port. We went aboard long before any one in 
town could possibly have begun to work up 
interest in the death of that unfortunate man. 
The felucca set sail; and no one found any ob¬ 
jection to raise against the departure of three 
kind-hearted old gentlemen noted for the 
promptness with which they paid their bills. 
From Malta we took another boat to Cadiz; 
and from Cadiz we went on to Seville, where 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 131 

we were isure no citizen of the Two Sicilies 
wonld ever suspect our presence. 

“But nowadays, alas, the earth has become 
much smaller, and the telegraph, especially, has 
seriously complicated our manner of living. 
Take your case, Monsieur le capitaine. I have 
no doubt that in the course of the next few 
hours, any number of official dispatches will 
be sent out over all this region, broadcasting 
the news that you are missing and asking light 
on the mysterious failure of your mission. 
There is another difficulty. At the time of our 
settling here, I was obliged, through the obnox¬ 
ious provisions of French law, to make a 
declaration before your magistrates, in order to 
acquire legal title to this homestead. So you 
see, the authorities know who I am; or at least 
they think they know who I am. You can rely 
upon it: if you were to drop out of sight, an 
army of detectives would come looking for you, 
and turn this house upside down from cellar 
to attic. You know that I am right. Well, 
there we are, in a blind alley as it were. We 
cannot let you go away, alive and free, as you 
came. Nor can we keep you here, a prisoner— 
or a corpse. . . 

Again he broke off. Then inclining his head 
slightly to one side, and pushing his lips for¬ 
ward into a grimace of amusement, he laughed 


132 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


once more in the same thin, high-pitched, crack¬ 
ling tone. 

“I seem to note a movement of surprise in 
you,” he now continued. “I imagine you are 
thinking of your friend, Madame de X. . ., and 
you are objecting that she comes here, goes 
away, comes back again, and that others, doubt¬ 
less, of our contributors do likewise without 
any untoward consequence resulting. And you 
are right. But do you suppose that she or any 
one of her co-workers knows the slightest thing 
about us and about what we are doing, that any 
one of them is in the least conscious of the 
philanthropic service he or she is rendering? 
Monsieur le capitaine, our disposition to soli¬ 
tude has always inclined us to choose very se¬ 
cluded spots for our abode in whatever neigh¬ 
borhood we are living. The road to our door 
is necessarily a long one, and our guests would 
have good reason to complain had we not, from 
the very outset, devised a means of sinking them 
into an hypnotic slumber which spares them all 
consciousness of fatigue. On such a system, 
for that matter, our security itself depends, as 
you can readily see. By virtue of it, we are 
able, whenever we set up our houshold for ten 
or twenty years in some hospitable region, to 
survey the inhabitants for their strongest and 
most robust members, to select, in the end, those 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 133 


who are freest and most independent in their 
habits and manner of living. These latter, only, 
become collaborators in our Secret. And may 
I, in this connection, reassure you, in case there 
should be some temptation to jealousy on your 
part: Madame de X. . . . was not chosen by us 
for her pretty eyes, though these may, I grant 
you, be the brightest pair in the world; but be¬ 
cause she lives, for most of the time, quite 
apart from any relatives, and because her coun¬ 
try house, situated at some distance from 
Toulon, requires frequent protracted absences 
from the city; and her occasional disappear¬ 
ances are not, therefore, likely to cause un¬ 
easiness in her husband or in any of her friends. 
I hope, now, Monsieur le capitaine, that your 
mind is at rest on that point. . . 

. . as I wish mine were on the issue of 
your adventure! We have reached this con¬ 
clusion in our talk thus far: that you cannot 
leave this place alive and free; on the other 
hand, you cannot remain here a prisoner, and 
much less a corpse. Oh, of course, we might 
conceivably take unfair advantage of the situa¬ 
tion you are in, kill you, and carry your body 
to some place where no possible suspicion could 
fall upon us. But for all you may be thinking 
or may actually have said, we are not murder¬ 
ers, Monsieur le capitaine, nor anything re- 


134 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

senabling murderers. For that reason we shall 
not kill you, even were the temptation to do so 
to be very great indeed. . . . 

“Such being the case, our problem is to dis¬ 
cover some way of not killing you ... a prob¬ 
lem which I regard as difficult enough to merit 
consulting the views of each of us, yours in¬ 
cluded, Monsieur le capitainei” 

The marquis once more opened his snuff-box 
and offered a pinch first to the count and then 
to the vicomte. Then he helped himself; and 
this time he sneezed, voluptuously, into his 
handkerchief. 


XXII 


E ACH in turn, at a deferential nod of their 
respective father and grandfather, first 
the count and then the vicomte proffered their 
suggestions; and so long had I been listening 
to the shrill falsetto of the marquis, that the 
sharp, low-pitched enunciation of the other two 
almost made me start with surprise, paralyzed 
though I was. 

“ Monsieur /’ said the count, addressing the 
Marquis Gaspard, ‘‘you are right on every 
point; and especially in what you said of the 
danger we incur from the presence of Monsieur 
le capitaine in this place—a danger enhanced 
by the fact that Madame de X. . . . is likewise 
our guest at the present moment. We cannot 
think of sending her away before this evening, 
whether to Toulon or to Sollies. That would 
expose her too soon to the fatigue of the return 
journey. She is still extremely weak, and nei¬ 
ther you nor I, in the very worst circumstances, 
would consent to risking an innocent life. Now 
tomorrow morning, this neighborhood will be 
full of soldiers—we can depend upon that. For, 
obviously, Monsieur is very close to the gov- 

135 



136 THE HOUSE OP, THE SECRET 


ernor: his absence will be noticed, and a 
thorough search made. We have every reason 
to fear a visit ourselves; and in such an un¬ 
fortunate event we shall be compelled to con¬ 
ceal two persons instead of one: a double dan¬ 
ger, if you think as I think.” 

“I do,” said the marquis. 

The count bowed and proceeded: 

‘‘The path of virtue is not the easiest to fol¬ 
low in a case like this: no end of criminal or 
treacherous devices suggest themselves for re¬ 
lieving us of our present embarrassment. To 
mention one: few people in Toulon are un¬ 
aware of the relations existing between Madame 
de X. . . . and Monsieur le capitaine. It would 
be a simple matter to account for his disappear¬ 
ance by turning suspicion upon this estimable 
young lady. Can there be any doubt of that? 
Tomorrow police and soldiery will be searching 
this territory inch by inch. On the Mort de 
Gauthier, not far from the carcass of Mon¬ 
sieur’s horse—that clue it is too late to obliter¬ 
ate—they find the captain’s lover! Nothing 
more would be necessary: of course—a “crime 
passionel,” iserved to the taste of the metro¬ 
politan press! The work of a jealous woman! 
The eagerness of the public to accept such an 
exciting hypothesis would divert all attention 
from us without fail. And Madame de X. . . ., 




THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 137 


mark you, would meanwhile he unable to defend 
herself from a charge the very monstrousness 
of which would quite confound her. That un¬ 
fortunate girl could never explain to herself, 
let alone to her judges, her incomprehensible 
presence in such improbable surroundings. ’ ’ 
The Vicomte Antoine had raised his head: 
i 6 Such barbarity, such cowardice, would be 
worse than murder outright and stain our hands 
darker than with blood: you would make us the 
vilest of cads, Monsieur.’* 

There was an abundance of heat in his tone. 
The count turned toward him and bowed with a 
nod of approval: 

“I agree with you, and no rational gentle¬ 
man devoted to a life in accord with Nature, 
would ever allow an innocent head to fall under 
an unjust punishment. But observe, neverthe¬ 
less: no court would ever convict the lady on 
pure supposition; and all direct evidence of a 
crime would be wanting. ...” 

The vicomte interrupted: “I grant you that 
a court might acquit, Monsieur; but the public 
never. And this woman, convicted through 
our agency of having lived according to her 
heart, would be the victim of general hostility 
and opprobrium. Her honor would be smirched 
forever, and her life ruined.” 

“That is true,” the count again admitted. 


138 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

The squeaky laugh of the marquis took them 
both to task: 

‘ 4 Enough, gentlemen! Spare us your preci¬ 
osities, I beg of you. There you are, at it 
again, indulging your usual fatuities in behalf 
of the widowed mother and her ten children! 
Will you gentlemen never tire of sentimentaliz¬ 
ing—playing with those soap-bubbles of yours: 
Humanity, Fraternity, Love, Nature? Does 
neither of you see that the security of our 
Secret is perhaps of more importance than the 
so-called good name of a woman who has al¬ 
ready, of her own accord, made herself the talk 
of a county? The solution you have suggested, 
Sir, is by no means unworthy of consideration. 
I do not, however, regard it as the best. I think 
that before deciding on any course we should 
review all the possibilities before us. It is your 
turn, Vicomte. Have you something practicable 
to propose?” 

The youngest of the three men hesitated. 
Finally he said: 

“May it not be that the solution lies in the 
very magnetic forces over which we have 
control? I am thinking of yours particularly, 
Monsieur, so prodigiously powerful, when you 
choose to exert them. It has occurred to me 
that w'e might send the captain home, free to 
all appearances, but still retained under such 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 139 

an influence that every word he uttered would 
be dictated by us. We could gain some days in 
that way; and then. . . .” 

The smile on the lips of the marquis was 
almost a sneer: 

“Then what?” he questioned. 

The vicomte failed to find an answer, and the 
marquis supplied one for him: 

“Then . . . nothing! Where could such a 
comedy end? How long do you think we could 
stand the strain? It is no easy matter to keep 
our hold on an old man ready for the grave. 
Could we, without a moment’s respite, and till 
the end of the world, suppress the individuality 
of a man like Monsieur le capitaine, youthful, 
robust of body, and strong of will? Nonsense, 
Monsieur! Utter nonsense! Find something 
better than that, Vicomte. Come, gentlemen, 
you have heads! Use them! ’ ’ 

But the count and the vicomte added not a 
word. The staccato laugh of the marquis alone 
continued to grate through the silence of the 
hall. 


XXIII 


S UDDENLY my flaccid arteries began to dh< 
late again under stronger pulsations of my 
heart. As had been my experience a few mo¬ 
ments earlier, a diffuse tingling spread through 
all my fibres, and the paralyzing grasp upon 
me was relaxed anew. But on previous occa¬ 
sions my freedom had been only half restored 
and for very brief intervals. Now I was free, 
free from head to foot—a liberty without any 
restraint whatever; and the sensation of pos¬ 
sessing it was destined to endure. I raised my 
head in astonishment. On my eyes the eyes of 
the marquis rested; but no imperious com¬ 
mands were emanating from them now. 

A temptation flashed across my mind: to 
leap from my chair, spring upon my captors, 
and, disarmed as I was, make a fight to the 
death against them. And a second thought also 
came to me: the thought of fleeing. 

But I contented myself in the end with a 
shrug of the shoulders. What could I do, after 
all! Speedier than my flight, more powerful 
than any violence, the unerring glance darting 

140 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 141 

from the old man’s eyes would have halted me, 
overwhelmed me—that I well knew. If indeed 
he was now loosening the unseen bonds that 
held me, much as shackles are removed from 
a prisoner once the doors of the gaol are closed, 
I was in reality no less a captive than before; 
and any strength I may have had, though I 
was now ostensibly free to use it, seemed hardly 
dangerous to my three antagonists. 

So I sat there motionless in my chair. 

When the marquis now addressed me it was 
in a very gentle tone indeed. 

“Monsieur le capitaine,” said he, “I am sure 
you are at present in a much more reasonable 
frame of mind and that you understand perfect¬ 
ly at last the kind of people with whom you are 
dealing: just plain decent people like yourself 
—only a great deal older, and with lives, for 
that reason, necessarily more precious. Yes, 
that is the whole question, really: to safe¬ 
guard, first of all, these marvelous, virtually 
immortal lives we three are living, and then, if, 
and so far as possible, to do something for you; 
just as we always do the best we can for the 
men and women who serve us in the manner I 
have explained. A simple situation, isn’t it? 
I am inclined to trust your sense of fair play, 
Monsieur le capitaine. You will admit that we 
have treated you considerately thus far, refrain- 


142 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


ing from unseemly harshness even when you 
had tried our patience sorely. Our desire you 
see, is to regard you not as an enemy but as an 
ally, a co-worker, a friend. Fundamentally 
both you and we have the same object in view. 
That enables me, without further delay, to invite 
you to take a part in our deliberations. You 
have heard what has just been said. Unfortu¬ 
nately no workable plan seems to have come 
from it. I wonder whether you, perchance, can 
think of some egress from our difficulties V 9 
I beseech you—you who read these lines that 
I am writing, struggling perhaps to decipher 
the crude scrawling of this pencil now worn to 
the wood, bear me witness that my Adventure 
was a terrible adventure, fraught with a horror 
beyond humanity, beyond life. All that night 
long—it was my last night, remember—I was 
not my normal self, but rather like a dreamer 
caught in the terrors of some ghastly night¬ 
mare; and if I chanced, while groping in the 
depths of that abyss, to forget, for a moment, 
that I was a man, and was able to think, for a 
moment, of betraying the cause of Men, of 
Mortal Men, for the profit and comfort of the 
Men of Prey, the Ever-living Men, do you who 
read my full confession, measure my weakness 
with the measure of your own; and do not con¬ 
demn me lightly! 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 143 

Yes, of just that I was guilty! And any 
crime was in vain. 

When the Marquis Gaspard had twice re¬ 
peated his question: “Can you, perchance, 
think of some egress from our difficulties,” I, 
yes, I, Andre Narcy with lowered head and 
cheeks aflame, made answer. And I answered 
with these literal words: 

“Monsieur, open your doors and let me de¬ 
part in peace; and let Madame de X. . . the 
girl I love, go also. Give me your word of 
honor as a gentleman that this lady will never 
again be called to this house; and I, for my part, 
will give my word of honor as a soldier, never 
to breath a word to living person, man or 
woman, free mason or priest, of anything that 
I have seen or heard here, or even of your ex¬ 
istence !” 

The Marquis Gaspard was on his feet almost 
before I had finished: 

“ Monsieur/’ said he, with a wave of the hand, 
“I congratulate you! That is what I had been 
hoping to hear! Your proposal affords me un¬ 
bounded satisfaction: I would fain see in it 
the beginning of a perfect understanding be¬ 
tween us, with promise of the further success 
certain to spring from such perfect accord / 9 

He sat down again, felt his pockets for his 



144 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 


snuff-box, took it out, reflected a moment, and 
then, with another toss of the head, resumed: 

“Alas, Monsieur, I am deeply pained at my 
inability to accept, offhand, a proposition in 
itself so generous. Pray do not mistake my 
meaning: I have the sincerest regard for your 
word of honor as a soldier. I hold for it the 
same high esteem which you profess for my 
word of honor as a gentleman. Both, we may 
rest assured, are of pure alloy, more precious 
than gold, more trusty than steel. I have im¬ 
plicit confidence in you, Monsieur le capitaine, 
as you will have the charity to believe! But— 
have you considered carefully, Monsieur le 
capitaine? The Secret which you would take 
in trust so courageously is a burden that weighs 
more heavily than you realize perhaps. What 
is needed to betray it? A word merely, a single 
imprudent word! Who, other than a man be¬ 
reft of speech, could undertake to withhold such 
a word eternally? Why, Monsieur le capitaine, 
how can one deny it? Look at the matter as it 
actually stands! I ask you: do you never talk 
in your sleep? Bo you always sleep out of 
hearing of others? Can you be certain never 
to have a fever, a delirium? That might be 
enough! That might be enough! You can see 
the point, I am sure: good faith, by itself, has 
no practical value in such a serious circum* 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 145 


t 

stance. It is no discourtesy to you if we must 
reject, to our extreme regret, the offer of a 
promise which might be dangerous to the honor 
of the man brave enough to make it—with the 
most earnest intentions, as I know.” 

■ The old man here bowed to me with a very 
formal deference. When he proceeded, it was 
with a change of tone: 

“But, whatever the course we are finally to 
adopt, it would help to know with reasonable 
accuracy, beforehand, whether we may be ex¬ 
aggerating the probability of immediate dan¬ 
ger. Monsieur le capitaine, no one is better 
placed than you to enlighten us on that detail. 
Will you not tell us therefore: are we right, 
or are we wrong, in assuming that, with this 
coming dawn, a patrol will begin looking for 
you in this neighborhood?” 

Without speaking, I nodded in the affirmative. 

“Ah,” commented the marquis, with deep 
concern. 

He sat thinking for some moments. 

“Your horse,” he finally continued, “they 
tell me its carcass is lying out there on the Col 
de la Mort de Gauthier.” 

Again I nodded. 

His next words were uttered in a subdued 
tone almost as though he were thinking aloud 
to himself: 



146 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


“So the real search will begin there! The 
important thing is to have it a brief one. Time 
is a capital consideration. The speediest solu¬ 
tion should be the best. . . .” 

He had opened his snuff box, and with one of 
his fingers was stirring the tobacco about, 
absent-mindedly: 

“Beyond a doubt. . . . The danger will be 
less in proportion as it be brief. . . . Those 
people will hunt and hunt, and keep hunting 
for a long time ... A long time, except on 
one condition. . . .” 

He looked at me, and once or twice again 
he tossed his head in his characteristic manner: 

“Except on one condition—the condition that 
they find immediately . . . what they are look¬ 
ing for! What would satisfy them? You, of 
course, nothing, nobody else—you, alive or dead 
. . . preferably dead! . . 

I was certain he was preparing to broach the 
subject of assassination; and I had quite pre¬ 
pared myself: 

“I am in your power ,’ 9 I observed coldly. 

But the marquis frowned and answered 
curtly: 

“Monsieur le capitaine, I thought I had ex¬ 
plained to you that we would not kill you even 
were the failure to do so to cost us dearly.” 



.THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 147 


He shrugged his shoulders; and then, turning 
to his two companions, he said: 

“I see no alternative: we must organize, 
stage as it were, some ingenious situation, fit 
to deceive those investigators, who, for that 
matter, start with no prepossessions, and are a 
very ordinary lot of numbskulls into the bar¬ 
gain. It will not be so difficult to arrange some¬ 
thing. All we need is a corpse, at the foot of 
a precipice; a safe distance from here, natur¬ 
ally, and not too far from the Mort de Gau¬ 
thier. . . 

Again he relapsed into thought, his eyes fixed 
on the floor. 

But the Vicomte Antoine raised an objection. 

“A corpse, yes! But we haven’t one, Mon¬ 
sieur. Where can we get a corpse! Can you 
be thinking of breaking a grave, somewhere!” 
• The marquis came out of his revery, and 
laughed aloud: 

“Antoine, there you are again—the inevi¬ 
table touch of Gothic! Will you never get cured 
of your romanticism! What a thrill! A dark 
night! A cemetery! Three men stealing up to 
a vault with pick-axes. . . . The idea is not 
only romantic: it is asinine. Do you suppose 
the stupidest police sergeant, even, would stop 
at the first skull and cross bones he came to, 
and immediately draw up the death certificate 


148 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


of our friend, the captain, here? And that 
death certificate, precisely, we are looking for, 
are we not! For the world, for every living 
person in it, Monsieur le capitaine must be a 
dead man, and of a death as simple and as easily 
explainable as possible. Then only can we feel 
secure!” 

His jocular mood vanished. He looked up 
at me again with deepest concern. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “I am profoundly 
sympathetic with you! I realize how hard it 
must seem to lose one ’s self—one’s name, one’s 
professional and social position, one’s very in¬ 
dividuality. That, alas, is the lot in store for 
you! You will be allowed to live—that I have 
promised, and I reiterate the promise now. But 
you will nevertheless have, in some cemetery, 
a grave with a stone and an epitaph upon it, 
and under the sod, a coffin with your mortal 
remains. There is no escape from that; and I 
beg you to be as resigned as possible!” 

An icy chill ran the length of my spine. For 
death I had been long preparing; but I was be¬ 
ginning at last to see that dying was not what 
threatened me: it was a question of something 
else, of something worse, perhaps. 

The Vicomte Antoine persisted in his objec¬ 
tion: 



THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 149 

41 ‘But those mortal remains, where are 

we . . 

The marquis cut the sentence off with an 
obliqne downward movement of his hand and 
arm: 

“Here!” said he. 


XXIV 


TN the silence which followed, I could hear the 
violent leap of my heart and feel the drops 
of chilling sweat as they gathered about my 
temples. I was afraid, with that indescribable 
sensation of fear which one has of the dark, 
or of the ghosts and phantoms that walk by 
night. The falsetto of the marquis did little to 
allay my weird uneasiness when his voice again 
came to my ears. He was speaking to me: 

“Monsieur le capitaine, I have been weighing 
the pros and cons in my mind carefully and 
thoroughly. But now my decision has been 
made. From it all our further deliberations 
must proceed. You, of course, can have no 
rational objection to it, since you could devise 
no means for solving the problem before us 
when your turn came. You will be so kind, 
accordingly, as to consider the present recourse 
settled beyond appeal.” 

He raised his right hand as though about toi 
take an oath: 

“Monsieur le capitaine, up to this day, you 
have been Monsieur Andre Narcy, captain of 
cavalry, staff officer at the fortress of Toulon. 
You are no longer such: Monsieur Andre 

150 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 151 


Narcy, captain of cavalry, staff officer of the 
said fortress, is hereby suppressed, and nothing 
can save him, since his life has become a mortal 
menace to the Ever-living Man. Yon, Mon¬ 
sieur—henceforth I cannot call yon Monsieur 
le capitaine—will continue to live under such 
name as shall be pleasing to you; but you shall 
continue to live here, a prisoner in this house 
■—at least for a certain length of time; for it is 
by no means a life-long captivity that we are 
obliged to impose upon you. Our sojourn in 
this place may be shortened. Out of considera¬ 
tion for you, we will undertake to limit your 
restraint to a maximum of three years, dating 
from today. We will change our residence as 
soon as we may safely do so, without arousing 
unduly hazardous suspicions. We will take you 
with us. Then, on any spot on earth which you 
may designate—we require only that it be dis¬ 
tant—we will set you at liberty, gladly, and 
without demanding any pledge of silence what¬ 
soever from you. Why such a pledge, indeed? 
Your story, should you tell one, would be that 
of an unknown adventurer—or that of an im¬ 
poster, should you have the extravagant au¬ 
dacity to attempt a resuscitation of Captain 
Andre Narcy. Thirty or forty months before 
this time on this 22nd of December, 1908, Cap¬ 
tain Andre Narcy was found dead; and, unques- 




152 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

tionably identified, was buried with military- 
honors. Such a story, I repeat, and as you 
know well, would send you to an asylum for a 
much longer time than the three or four years 
we ask of you. No, you will be silent without 
a pledge and silently begin life over again—a 
new life, which, I trust, will be happy, pros¬ 
perous, and free from accidents, even from acci¬ 
dents less tragic than the one which has brought 
your present life to an end this very hour!” 

I had listened, with a deathly chill in my 
heart. The marquis leaned forward toward me. 

“Do you accept this recourse—of your own 
free will?” he asked. 

I threw my shoulders back and mustered the 
little strength that still remained in me. With 
head high I answered: 

“I am in your power. There is nothing for 
me to accept or to refuse. I have no choice in 
the matter.” 

To my surprise, my answer, easy as it must 
have been to foresee, strangely disconcerted my 
prosecutor. I saw him bite his lips, and look 
hesitatingly first to his right and then to his 
left. After a time, he resumed, abruptly, and 
with a curious plaint in his voice: 

“Monsieur, I am disappointed in you, and I 
confess to you quite frankly that this resigna¬ 
tion you are affecting does not serve my pur- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 153 

poses at all. Eemember, if you will be so kind, 
exactly who we are. In my view, you and I do 
not stand toward each other in the position 
respectively of victim and executioner. And 
you have an absolutely free choice in agreeing 
or in refusing to submit to what we ask of you. ’’ 

I was quite unable to fathom the meaning of 
this man who was addressing me in this incom¬ 
prehensible language. I made no answer. 

“Once more I ask you, Monsieur,’’ he in¬ 
sisted: “Do you consent freely and heartily 
to the death of Captain Andre Narcy; and do 
you consent freely and heartily to survive him, 
at the simple cost of a few years of pleasurable 
captivity?” 

I made no effort to understand, this time. I 
shrugged my shoulders and answered bluntly: 

“No.” 

Once and again the marquis tossed his head. 

“Monsieur, you are making a great mis¬ 
take,” said he; and his bright, restless eyes 
swept me with a glance of severe disapproba¬ 
tion: “A great mistake, Monsieur! I am a 
very very old man. May I plead indulgence for 
my years and employ toward you the language 
a grandfather might use toward one of his chil¬ 
dren’s children? You are a stubborn bad-tem¬ 
pered boy—naughty, would be almost the word. 
You are rebelling petulantly against an inexor- 


154 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 


able destiny which, nevertheless, is deaf to the 
whimpering of men. Yes, it is childish of you; 
your conduct is not seemly in a grown man. I 
hope you cannot be imagining that a simple ‘no’ 
from you is going to cause us so very much em¬ 
barrassment, or that we are going to commit 
suicide just because you refuse a real favor at 
our hands! Agreed: we will not kill you, 
whatever happens. But do not speculate too 
rashly on the horror of bloodshed which we so 
deeply feel. You have little to gain from it. 
You have been able to see from what I have told 
you how little, on the whole, we hesitate where 
women are concerned. Nothing would be easier 
that to sacrifice the so-called honor of the girl 
you love in exchange for the peace of mind of 
us three old men. No, nothing would be easier 
—as the count here explained to you, only a 
moment ago.” 

And at this point he too shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders. After a moment’s pause, he resumed: 

“What do you say, Monsieur? Shall we stop 
all this nonsense, and play the game with cards 
face up on the table 1 Look here: my idea, as 
I intimated, is to deceive the civil and military 
authorities of Toulon, and the newspapers and 
the public of Toulon, in regard to what has actu¬ 
ally happened to you. They will, in other 
words, believe you dead. Your death certificate 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 155 


will be duly filed, your obituary written, your 
grave dug, and filled. In such a case, no one 
will ever dream of looking for you away off 
here in this lonely mansion, where you will con¬ 
tinue to live, temporarily, the life that we are 
living—temporarily, I say; for as I promised 
a bare moment ago, you will be set at liberty 
again, and as soon as possible, in some distant 
country. What is there so terrible in all that 
for a man in your situation—unmarried, with¬ 
out dependents, without serious responsibilities 
of any kind! Now, for staging the first act of 
this trifling comedy, your cooperation is abso¬ 
lutely indispensable. This fictitious corpse they 
are to bury with' military honors, honors 
worthily your due, Monsieur, why—I cannot 
produce it with the wave of a magic wand over 
a cucumber, as some fairy godmother might do 
in a Christmas tale; but I can produce it in a 
manner quite as satisfactory—only, to do so, I 
must have your help, a help which, I repeat, 
must be freely, spontaneously, proffered!” 

I had listened I know not whether with 
greater surprise or alarm. At his concluding 
words I saw the Count Frangois and the Vi- 
comte Antoine turn with one movement toward 
their respective parent and grandparent, their 
eyes aflame with a sudden intelligence as though 
some revelation which had not yet dawned on 


156 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

me had come to them. Once more I mustered 
all the forces of my faltering will; and I said: 

“Why all this beating about the bush? You 
have the upper hand. WTiy so particular about 
the precise form of blackmail you will eventu¬ 
ally resort to? I have already offered my life 
in ransom for the life of Madame de X. . .! 
Do you want me to repeat that offer? Very 
well! I am still ready. Do your will upon me!” 

Several times the Marquis Gaspard waved a 
broad wide-open hand from right to left, each 
gesture timed to an exclamation of protest: 

“Tic tac too! Did ever you see a worse case 
of balkiness? Monsieur, for the dozenth time, 
and as you know perfectly well: nobody but 
you has raised the question of throat-cutting! 
No, it’s a simple matter of what you call, with 
some generosity I must say, the good name of 
a woman; which presumptive good name is to 
be saved or sacrificed, as you chance to decide, 
and at a price of which you are thoroughly 
aware. However, I will concede a point: once 
this so-called good name has been saved, I will, 
if you think it in the least important, add the 
further stipulation that the object of your con¬ 
cern shall never again be invited to this place, 
that she shall henceforth and forever be ex¬ 
cused from that special collaboration with us 
which, a few moments ago, seemed to arouse in 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 157 

you a very understandable compassion. What 
more can you ask, Monsieur? The question 
may now be stated thus: will you pay for 
madame, or shall madame pay for you?” 

He had not completed the antithesis before I 
nodded in assent. The marquis rose: “I thank 
you,” said he with great solemnity. “I have 
your word of honor. Between a man like you 
and a man like me that is quite enough.” 

Meanwhile the count and the vicomte had also 
risen to their feet. 

“Gentlemen,” said the marquis to them in a 
tone of command, “I noticed that you at last 
had understood me. Be so good, accordingly, 
as to attend to all the preparations necessary 
for the work that is now before us. No time 
must be lost, since the dawn is close at hand. 
For my part I must rest a moment, to collect 
myself.” 

He had stepped over, meanwhile, to one of 
the dormeuses of the complicated backs and arm 
rests, the curious design of which had attracted 
my attention when I first came into the room. 
He sat down, or rather, he buried himself, in 
one of these chairs. I saw him relax against 
the cushions, which seemed calculated to fit 
every projection and indentation of his form. 

There he rested, with arms folded and eyes 
closed. 



XXV 


W HILE I waited, seated in my chair, look¬ 
ing on at everything intently, the Count 
Frangois and the Vicomte Antoine silently ap¬ 
plied themselves to a series of mysterious ac¬ 
tivities. First they took up each piece of furni¬ 
ture and moved it away from the center of the 
hall, standing the chairs in line against the wall, 
and leaving the whole floor clear as if in prepa¬ 
ration for a ball. Next, and still without ex¬ 
changing a syllable, evidently repeating an 
operation learned from long experience, they 
brought out the horse, or easel, of which I have 
spoken, and set it up, being careful to adjust it 
with precision to the longitudinal axis of the 
hall, at a point about a third way down the 
length thereof. Next they opened the antique 
chest, and drew from it a curious object which 
they handled with great care, carrying it, with 
visible effort, to the foot of the horse on which 
they finally erected it in a vertical position. I 
noted that this object was about as large as an 
ordinary cart wheel, that it was flat and cir¬ 
cular. A sort of lens, I judged it to be, much 
like the glass reflector of a powerful search- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 159 


light. Its substance was not crystal, however, 
but a material which I could not identify, some¬ 
thing translucent rather than transparent, color¬ 
less when viewed with even light, but otherwise 
showing brilliant metallic glints, shading from 
ruby red to emerald green with a profusion of 
all the tints of gold. This lustre, moreover, 
stood out against the colorless background, as 
if it came from matter distinct from the disk 
itself, though incorporated in the latter’s sub¬ 
stance. You are doubtless acquainted with 
Danzig brandy, a liquor which seems filled with 
particles of floating gold; or with samples of 
Leyden ware showing .bits of crumpled tinsel 
sprinkled through the glass. Such was the dish, 
or lens, in question. 

Finally the two old men stepped cautiously 
up to their respective father and grandfather, 
still rigorously motionless in his strange dor - 
meuse; and avoiding the slightest noise, they 
slowly, gently, wheeled him towards a point on 
the floor which I noticed was marked off, with 
geometrical exactitude, by four plaques of 
glass—one apparently for each of the four legs 
of the chair. Indeed, when they had pushed the 
old man to the square, the count and the vicomte 
kneeled on the floor to make sure that each cas¬ 
tor was in the right position. From all their 
movements I could see that the operation they 


160 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


were about to perform was one requiring me¬ 
ticulous accuracy. This chair in place, they 
turned to the second dormeuse, which, though 
empty, was advanced just as carefully and 
noiselessly, and its position verified with just 
as thorough an examination. 

Whereupon, the two old men returned to the 
seats they had previously occupied, now, how¬ 
ever, sitting with their backs against the wall 
and their faces turned toward me. During all 
this time, I, for my part, had not stirred; nor 
had I been once disturbed or caused to change 
my position in the slightest. 

I sat there, observing intently. Things were 
now arranged as follows in the room: the two 
dormeuses and the horse stood at three points 
on a straight line running lengthwise of the hall. 
The two seats faced each other, with the horse 
between them but nearer to one than to the 
other. Assuming the lens to be a refractor, I 
concluded from a rough computation of the 
angles, that the image passing through it from 
one chair would fall exactly into the other. 

However, the Marquis Gaspard, his body still 
relaxed and his eyes closed, continued to give 
not a sign of life. 

A long silence ensued. 


XXVI 


A LONG, long silence. . . . 

At first I struggled with all my soul to 
keep cool and indifferent, preserving on my fea¬ 
tures the mask of disdain which I had somehow 
imprinted there. But little by little I could feel 
that the hold I had on my nerves was growing 
steadily weaker. My Adventure was beginning 
to show a semi-supernatural aspect the very 
indefiniteness of which gradually paralyzed my 
courage as my motor centers had been para¬ 
lyzed an hour or more before. So much so that 
eventually I grew alarmed lest my captors per¬ 
ceive the uncontrollable anxiety that was taking 
possession of me: I suddenly arose, and with 
the idea of hiding the expression on my face, I 
walked several steps away down the room. 

Still without moving, asleep perhaps, the 
Marquis Gaspard seemed not to notice. Not 
so the Count Frangois nor the Vieomte Antoine, 
however. They, with a perfection of courtesy 
and with no trace of irony so far as I could see, 
inquired as to whether I were tired, or indeed 
impatient. 

“Monsieur,” the count spoke up solicitously, 

161 


162 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

4 ‘ be so kind as to excuse the slowness of all this. 
If I have accurately divined my father’s idea, 
I assure you it is a very bold one, and care in 
preparation is a matter of unavoidable neces¬ 
sity. We have before us, unless I am quite mis¬ 
taken, one of the most delicate operations mag¬ 
netic science knows; and the Marquis Gaspard, 
with a proper caution, is summoning every 
particle of energy at his command. Believe me, 
Monsieur: he will need it all!” 

I had stopped, and was looking at the man as 
he began speaking; but my eyes now turned 
instinctively toward the strange apparatus 
which he and his son had but recently put in 
position on the easel. 

“That lens which you are examining,” the 
Vicomte Antoine explained, “is used for con¬ 
centrating the magnetic flow on the spot de¬ 
sired. It is made of a special compound in¬ 
vented by the Count de Saint Germain, and it 
has the power of refracting electrical waves 
just as glass refracts rays of light. By such 
inventions and after numberless unsuccessful 
experiments, the famous count, and my grand¬ 
father in his footsteps, were enabled to master 
the natural magnetism they possessed in their 
own bodies, and in consequence to obtain results 
which are rivalled by nothing that your alien¬ 
ists, your psychiatrists—that is what you call 


THE H0USE THE SECRET 163 


them, is it not ?—nor even your wonder-working 
mediums, have ever dreamed of. You will soon 
be convinced, I warrant you. The operation 
that is probably to be tried tonight will furnish 
you with a prodigious demonstration !’ 7 
. In spite of my ghastly desperation, I raised 
my eyebrows inquiringly. The vicomte shook 
his head, with a significant nod towards his 
grandfather. 

‘ 4 The marquis did not deem fit to discuss his 
project with us, nor even to reveal it in any 
precise detail to you. I should hardly regard 
myself as authorized to go into the matter more 
fully at present; but without divulging anything 
essential, I may ask whether you are familiar 
with a term from the jargon of the occult 
sciences—‘exteriorization’? You must have 
witnessed, at one time or another, the evocation 
of a so-called spirit by a medium V’ 

The question seemed so utterly inane that I 
did not answer. 

“I have, anyway,” the vicomte continued, 
overlooking my silence. “I remember having 
seen something of the sort with my own eyes. 
Two fairly skillful performers, one of whom 
called himself a medium, were entertaining a 
number of people, myself among them, in a 
darkened room in Paris; and one day they 
actually succeeded in producing a luminous 


164 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


shadow of an approximately human form; and 
this, they claimed, was the ghost of I forget 
what famous personage. That part of it was 
all a hoax, of course; though the shadow itself 
was not by any means. You could see it as 
plain as day, and almost touch it. There is no 
doubt in my mind that the practitioner in ques¬ 
tion was in possession of some of the same pro¬ 
cesses which we are using all the time, and got 
this shadow from his colleague by a kind of 
‘exteriorization,’ as they call it. This, to be 
sure, was all a very crude affair; but it does 
suggest some of the things we do in getting our 
life-workers to surrender a certain number of 
their cells or atoms to us; and it resembles more 
closely still the method we shall employ in a 
few moments . . . but I think I have said too 
much already . . 

He stopped, with an expression of mortifica¬ 
tion on his face; and the Count Frangois spoke 
up, as though to detract attention from his son’s 
last wmrds: 

“Monsieur, it is hardly worth while to dis¬ 
cuss that subject now, inasmuch as you will 
have full light upon it soon. I am going to seize 
this opportunity to congratulate you. What¬ 
ever you may be thinking of your experiences 
this night, it is really a piece of singular good 
fortune that has befallen you. Here you are an 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 165 


ordinary mortal, thrown by accident into the 
company of the Ever-living Men and forced, 
by an equally fortunate train of events, to share 
their lives for a certain length of time. Oh no, 
I beg of you—do not imagine I am bantering! 
Just consider! You people can count on less 
than a hundred years of life; and you are 
obliged, in consequence, to live in a perpetual 
hurry, thinking, talking, acting forever in a 
rush, bolting your daily bread, so to speak. 
Since you have to live rapidly in order to live 
at all, you never really know what living means, 
nor do you ever taste the infinite sweetness that 
life holds at bottom. Monsieur, the besetting 
thought that death is nearer by each moment 
must quite inhibit meditation and soil every lei¬ 
sure hour; and thoughtful idleness I regard as 
the one true delight, which far outstrips in 
consoling power the false and disappointing 
joys of sensuous indulgence. In enjoining on 
us to perpetuate not our youth but our maturer 
manhood, the Count de Saint Germain thought 
he was imposing on us a painful sacrifice that 
would, however, in the end prove well worth 
while. Over a long period of years, he himself 
had never tired of a most stormy voyage on the 
seas of human passion; and he ended in ship¬ 
wreck on the shoals laid in his course by a tress 
of golden hair. I wonder if he ever realized 


166 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

that he was missing the haven of real happiness 
through fundamental misapprehension on his 
own part of the relative value of things? Now 
to judge by the interest you seem to show in a 
certain woman—a good-looking woman, I grant 
you, but noteworthy in no other way that I can 
see—you must still be ignorant of the fatuity 
of carnal satisfactions, when these are com¬ 
pared with the joys that purely spiritual pleas¬ 
ures bring—through eyes, for example, that 
have learned to sense the simple yet sublime 
beauties of a sky reddened by the setting sun or 
of clouds touched with silver by a rising moon! ’ ’ 

The Vicomte Antoine raised an arm in a 
gesture of sanguine enthusiasm: 

“The savor of such enjoyments never cloys, 
Monsieur; and while you are our guest, I hope 
to have the opportunity of revealing to you two 
wonders that Mortal Men have never learned to 
taste: Night, Monsieur, and Day. The age to 
which you belong has stubbornly and blindly 
limited its vision to the mechanical arts, seek¬ 
ing an absurd perfection of bodily comfort and 
well-being which is useless and contemptible 
once it has been attained. Your generation has 
quite lost sight of the gratifications that natur¬ 
ally come to life; and, losing these from view, it 
has of course lost the power to appreciate them. 
You, for instance, just a few hours ago, were 



THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 167 


walking with me out on the heath. It was rain¬ 
ing and the night was menacing with storm. 
I am sure your mind was engrossed with the 
slippery mnddy path, the cold wet bushes—all 
the discomforts, in short. Did you once raise 
your eyes to the romantic splendors with which 
we were surrounded—those frowning brows of 
the hills, their crests piercing the pearly mantle 
of mist and fog in aspiration toward that upper 
wrapping of transparent silver that Nature 
throws over her chilly shoulders? . . 

I listened on in an amazement that for the 
moment quite mastered my anxiety. These 
atrocious demons, these vampires, cannibals in¬ 
deed since they lived, after all, on human flesh 
and blood—how could they bring themselves 
to affect such delicate and poetic hypocrisies? 
And my thoughts went out to all the pitiable 
victims who entered that accursed House of the 
Secret, strong robust young men and women, 
and left it pale, fainting, emaciated invalids; all 
to the end that three beasts of prey might es¬ 
chew “the false and disappointing joys of sen¬ 
suous indulgence’’ for the higher ones that 
“purely spiritual pleasures bring.” 


XXVII 


T HE Count Frangois stopped and looked at 
his father who still sat, or lay, motionless 
as a corpse in that singular dormeuse, half 
chair, half couch. Had there appeared on those 
utterly blank features some expression which 
I had not perceived! The count, at any rate, 
turned at once toward me, and said: 

“ Monsieur, we are almost ready. Think 
again, I beg of you. Is there really nothing you 
would like before the operation begins! Is 
there anything we can do for you within the 
limits you now know! Our earnest wish is to 
satisfy your slightest desire, if possible; and 
we hope you will enable us to demonstrate our 
best good will!” 

I was about to shake my head from right to 
left, in sign of refusal, when an idea flashed 
across my mind, setting my whole being afire 
with a sudden glow. I checked myself, my eyes 
fixed upon my interlocutor, one hand raised, my 
lips opening to form a word. 

“Do not hesitate, Monsieur,” the count en¬ 
couraged. 

“Gentlemen,” said I, with decision, and 

168 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 169 

sweeping all three of them with a rapid glance, 
“Gentlemen, there is one favor you could do 
me, a favor which I trust you will have no diffi¬ 
culty in according, such immense store do I set 
upon it. Grant me this boon I ask, and I am 
ready to repay you not with my passive consent 
merely, but with my most active and sincere 
assistance in whatever you intend to do with 
me—be it even against my life. Look, gentle¬ 
men: some time ago you allowed me, did you 
not, to visit the room where my friend Madame 
de X. ... is sleeping, perhaps in an hypnotic 
trance. My desire, my fervent prayer is to see 
her . . . once more . . . for one last time; but 
I must see her natural self, awake, that is, con¬ 
scious, living, so that I may speak to her and 
hear her speak to me, that I may bid her fare¬ 
well, forever, and spend one short hour alone, 
alone, with her. An hour, yes, just one hour. 
Then ... I shall be at your service, your man, 
your chattel, anything you wish, for as long a 
time as you wish.” 

I fell silent, crossing my arms upon my chest. 
Neither the count nor the vicomte replied for 
a moment; and I could see them consulting each 
other out of the corners of their eyes. Then, as 
they had so often done before, they turned to¬ 
ward their respective father and grandfather, 
and questioned him in silence. Again there was 


170 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


no change that I could see on that inert and 
expressionless countenance; and the old man’s 
eyelids remained firmly closed. But the Count 
Frangois must have seen something that I did 
not see; for he addressed me straightway and 
without the shadow of incertitude: 

“Monsieur,” said he, “your wish shall be 
granted. We will do as you propose.” 

A thrill of undescribable emotion swept over 
me. The count meanwhile held his gaze intently 
fixed upon his father’s face, interpreting to me 
the decision he found written there: 

“Monsieur,” he repeated, “we shall do as 
you propose. We shall have the honor of es¬ 
corting you to the room where Madame de X. 
. . . is sleeping. We shall leave you alone with 
her. As soon as we are gone, she, according to 
your request, will regain consciousness, and you 
will be free to converse with her on any subject 
without any restriction whatsoever. Do not 
be surprised, Monsieur. During your visit 
Madame de X. . . . will be her material self, 
awake, conscious, living, as you have asked. 
She will know that you are there, and she will 
be glad to see you. But of course she will still 
have over her eyes the invisible blinder that we 
have placed upon them. She will not know 
where she is, and will not find it extraordinary 
to be meeting you in a strange room. Indeed it 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 171 

will not be istrange to her. She will take it for 
her own or for yours. She will, in short, he 
unaware of everything which the vital interest 
of the Ever-living Men requires her not to 
know. Supposing, for example, you were to 
spend your time and pains in trying to enlighten 
this beneficent unconsciousness of hers. You 
will not succeed, I warn you in advance, for, at 
the end of the sixtieth minute, Madame de 
X • . . will fall asleep again, as we have bar¬ 
gained, and will lose all memory of this talk 
with you, which memory will be erased from 
her mind, rendered absolutely null and nil 
forever . . . Monsieur, will you be so kind as 
to step this way? . . 

He was already on the threshold, and, with 
the younger man leading, he crossed the same 
anteroom again. I followed close behind him. 
I am sure I staggered as I walked along. 

Outside the badly jointed door, the familiar 
perfume that I loved came to my nostrils in 
warm subtle waves of fragrance. I thought I 
was fainting as I breathed it in. 

“Monsieur,” the Count Frangois was now 
saying in a low voice, “ Monsieur, for the dura¬ 
tion of one hour, please consider this your 
house!” 


xvm 

S HE was still asleep, lost in tliat terrible 
slumber which, assuredly was more like 
death than like life. Her black eyelids, her livid 
lips, her ashen cheeks, her cold flesh, I scanned 
vehemently for some faint, deep-seated flush 
that would bespeak the coursing of a little blood, 
at least, through a few of her arteries . • • In 
vain! In vain! 

An endless minute passed. I had bent for¬ 
ward over the bed to gaze upon her, not daring 
to stir the coverlets with the merest touch of 
my fingers. Finally, from her sunken chest the 
sound of stronger breathing seemed to come; 
and simultaneously on both her cheeks I could 
distinguish the pallid but reassuring blush I had 
waited for, so long, so ardently . . . 

What now took place was like a swift, mirac¬ 
ulous resurrection. Her whole countenance 
regained its color gradually, her pulse beat 
more strongly, her beautiful breast began to 
raise the comforters in a regular rhythmic heav¬ 
ing. I lowered my head till my face almost 
rested on her eyelids, my lips ready to welcome 

172 



.THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 173 

with a kiss the first opening of her eyes; I could 
feel the vital warmth again returning to her 
forehead and cheeks. She sighed inaudibly and 
her lips sketched a smile. I could restrain my 
caress no longer. It was under a passionate 
shower of kisses from me that she returned to 
consciousness . . . 

Oh gods of Heaven and Hell! All this was 
but a few weeks ago! Yet how many ages have 
died, how many aeons have sunk into eternity, 
since that kiss was mine? 

She said: 

“Oh, I have been asleep! . . . And you were 
here, saucy boy!” 

She knotted her silken arms about my neck; 
and I felt her body—how light, how alarmingly 
light it was!—stiffen a little as she drew herself 
up languidly under the coverlets . . . 

She also said: 

“Dearest, dearest love! . . . Oh, how tired I 
am! ... It seems as though I could never again 
lift my head or stir a finger! . . . Never, never 
again! . . . But you love your poor little girl, 
don’t you? . . . Look out, Monsieur! Perhaps 
your doll is broken! ...” 

She said no more—just then; because my lips 
had smothered her last words. 

As she sat up, I piled the pillows behind her, 
Her hair of greenish gold poured in a sparkling 




174 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 

torrent down over her body. Her white arms 
still encircled my neck. She laughed—that 
laugh of mischievous girlish gaiety which I had 
always so much adored in her. I released my¬ 
self from her embrace; and resting a knee upon 
the bed, and throwing an arm around her won¬ 
derful shoulders, I plunged my gaze into the 
bright lucid depths of her eyes . . . And I for¬ 
got, I forgot, everything, everything! . . . 

She said: 

“Why, my hair is all down! I seem to have 
lost every comb, every pin to my name!” And 
she laughed aloud. 

I listened with all my soul. 

She drew up higher on the pillows, with an 
effort that brought the pallor to her face again. 
She cast a nervous glance about the room. I 
was afraid lest she perceive the bare walls, the 
grated window, the single wicker chair—afraid 
lest, perceiving them, she take fright at her 
strange surroundings, and kill the smile of trust¬ 
fulness and confidence that lingered entranc- 
ingly on her lips . . . But no! The invisible 
blinder w T as securely fastened upon her eyes. 
She saw nothing unusual in that chamber which 
was our prison. 

She asked simply: 

“What time is it? Surely not yet seven 
o’clock?” 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 175 

When I answered I too summoned a smile: 

“It’s early still, my silly, charming, little 

girl ...” 

With a toss of her head, she shook from her 
face a few golden tresses that had strayed there 
—they shone with all the splendor of the sun— 
and sinking back deliciously upon the pillows, 
on which her light, her exceedingly light form 
left scarcely any imprint, she observed: 

“I’m glad of that ... I can stay in bed a 
moment longer ... If I overslept, I might be 
late for dinner . . . How tired I am! If you 
only knew how tired, tired, tired I am!” 

She did not move again, but lay there pas¬ 
sively, happily, submissive to the kisses which 
I rained upon her, though barely pressing my 
lips to her tortured wasted flesh. 

No, I would tell her nothing! I would be 
very careful not to tell her anything! She did 
not suspect in the least. And what an immense 
good fortune that she did not know! Why en¬ 
lighten her, indeed? No! My despair, my ter¬ 
ror, my mortal danger, that must all remain for 
me alone! And she would never, never know! 
Since I was alone condemned, I alone would 
bear the horrors of my destiny. She, free, 
unknowing, redeemed, would be on her way 
back . . . toward life! I alone would stay be¬ 
hind, silently turning my footsteps toward . . . 


176 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


nonentity! . . . But for my silence I would be 
repaid with one supreme reward; the almost 
unbearable intoxication of this last love tryst, 
which would come to me pure, spotless, un¬ 
disturbed, without a shadow of any kind upon 
it . . . 

She was becoming more and more wakeful, 
and now was chatting with a ripple of words, 
words of no import, that entered like little 
gleams of freedom into the darkness of our 
prison. 

She said: 

46 Imagine, dearest! At my dressmaker ’s last 
Tuesday . . 

And later on: 

“You know very well whom I mean! Marie 
Therese, the ugly thing! I saw her! She was 
making up to you under my very nose, at the 
Squadron Ball . . 

And again: 

“The next time we go for a ride . . 

I, meanwhile, kept drawing my two hands 
down caressingly over her silky hair and silky 
arms, hungrily absorbing every possible sensa¬ 
tion of that living reality which was in her as 
her very self . . . And I thought . . . What 
was I, indeed, but a corpse, listening from the 
depths of a grave to living beings conversing on 
the sod overhead . . .? 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 177 

Yes, a corpse . . . 

My gaze was fixed upon her bright sea-green 
eyes, and upon her delicate, gaily chirping lips; 
and within me was a scream of desperate an¬ 
guish ! 

“You, you are my destroyer . . . you! You 
crossed my path, and I followed you; and you 
guided me, almost by the hand, to the yawning 
gateway of the tomb! Yes, that was true: a 
will-o ’-the-wisp of the deadliest lineage, leading 
the luckless wayfarer blindly to destruction! 
And I succumbed! Everything is lost . . . for 
me! But now . . . can’t you see, can’t you 
feel, my agony? You are gay? You laugh? 
You chatter? Is it not written on my face, is 
it not written in my heart, that I am doomed, 
that I shall never, never more set eyes upon 
you? Yes, it is all written there—my love, my 
fate, my death! And if you fail to read, it is 
because you know not how to read; and if you 
know not how to read, it is because you do not 
love. Oh my dear lost love! Oh my fragile 
Goddess! You do not love me ... so you will 
not miss me, overmuch . . . You will find an¬ 
other man to love ... Youth will erase unhappy 
memories ... You will begin life anew . . . 
life anew! Better thus! Much better thus! I 
. . . I love you! I am saving you! I love 
you!” 



178 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

And this last phrase I pronounced aloud, as 
though I were answering in those three words 
all that ishe had been saying to me: 

“I love you ... !” 

She stopped, and looked at me in astonish¬ 
ment. Then she burst into a gay laugh: 

“You love me! You love me? Thanks, Mon¬ 
sieur ! If ever you dared say you didn’t... !” 

To punish me, she drew my head down teas- 
ingly, and pressed her lips to mine, in a kiss 
that lasted . . . that lasted, till I knew; no 
more . . . 

When her clasp relaxed, I sat up again. She 
had sunk gently back upon the pillows. 

Suddenly her eyelids quivered. 

“Oh!” she said; “how that kiss fatigued me! 
Dearest, it cannot be seven o’clock? Won’t you 
tell me that I needn’t get up? I’m so tired! So 
tired! It can’t be sev ...” 

She collapsed suddenly upon the pillows, her 
eyes closed. 

The door behind me opened. 


XXIX 


TV/r ONSIEUR,” said the Marquis Gaspard to 
^ me, “it was a great pleasure to be able 
to allow you this hour you so much desired. I 
hope it came up fully to your expectations.” 
f He was standing in the center of the large 
hall to which I had just returned — taller he 
seemed to me than formerly, with a carriage 
more erect and eyes agleam with a brighter, 
more imperious flame. 

The candles along the wall had been put out; 
only the two lamps to the right and left of the 
fireplace were still lighted, and the Count Fran- 
gois was busy lowering the wicks of these. 

44 Monsieur,” the marquis continued, “will 
you not kindly take your place for what we still 
have to do?” 

He pointed to the deep chair in which he him¬ 
self had been resting before I left the room. 

I was anxious to betray no uneasiness what¬ 
ever. I advanced without hesitation to the seat 
appointed and calmly sat down. 

“Antoine V 9 the count called. 

I was in that one of the two chairs which 
seemed nearest to the great lens. Facing me, 

179 


180 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 

and some ten or twelve paces away was the 
other seat, its arms opening toward me. It was 
empty. The stuffed cushions on the back of my 
chair, of the seat, arms and head-rest, seemed 
to accommodate my body perfectly; so that I 
was not conscious of any weight or fatigue at 
all. I stiffened nevertheless when I saw what 
the Vicomte Antoine was about to do. At his 
father’s call, the younger man stepped forward 
in my direction carrying in his hand a sort of 
dark lantern, much larger than the one which 
had lighted our path over the mountains. 

‘‘Look out! Look out, Monsieur!” he called, 
noticing that I had fixed my eyes in some alarm 
upon him. “Turn your head the other way, or 
you may be blinded.” 

He slipped the shutter over the spot-light 
aside. I was bathed from head to foot in a 
harsh raw light which was all the more painful 
from the relative darkness of the rest of the 
room. I closed my eyes at first. When I opened 
them again, I avoided the stream of radiance 
that was turned upon me, and looked past it to 
one side, toward the lens and the empty chair 
beyond the latter. 

Despite my efforts to control myself, I 
trembled, stupidly trembled, at what I saw. The 
chair was no longer empty; someone, or rather, 
something, was occupying it —the luminous 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 181 


shadow of a man seated, a shadow of myself, in 
fact. Of this I furnished proof at once by rais¬ 
ing my arm, a movement which the shadow 
repeated with absolute fidelity. Now I under¬ 
stood; the hypothesis I had formed when the 
lens was first brought out was the correct one; 
the second chair was fixed on the spot where the 
image of the other chair, passing through the 
lens, would fall. The moment a vivid light was 
thrown upon me in that darkened room, my 
image became visible over there. There was 
nothing so mysterious in all that so far. I was 
somewhat ashamed of my first quiver of fright. 

After a second or so, the vicomte closed his 
lantern again, and the image disappeared. Then 
only did I remember something very strange, 
which at first had not occurred to me. If the 
apparatus nearby were an ordinary lens,- my 
image, as I had just observed it, should have 
been upside down, my feet above my head. Now 
such was not the case. It was right side up, a 
thing which I could not account for then, and 
have not been able to account for since. < 

Meanwhile, there had been a question, de¬ 
livered in the shrill falsetto of the marquis: 

* ‘Is the image clear V 9 

The vicomte’s low-pitched voice responded: 

“Perfectly, Monsieur!” 

I had let my head fall back against the prop 


182 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

behind it; and it half buried itself in the up¬ 
holstery, which sustained its weight so evenly 
and firmly that I am sure I could have fainted 
and yet still have kept to the same position 
without bending my neck. The field of my 
vision was proportionately reduced, however: I 
could see no one now except the Count Frangois, 
who was still watching his lamps, turning them 
by this time so low that a faint blue flicker only 
was visible around the wicks. 

The marquis asked another question, and this 
time of me: 

“Monsieur, you are well seated in your chair, 
quite comfortable, quite relaxed? It is very 
important that you should be, I caution you!” 

I tested the springs and mattressing: 

“I think I am all right,’’1 answered briefly. 

As I replied, I touched my fingers to the cov¬ 
ering of the dormeuse about me. It was not 
satin, nor velvet, as I had supposed; but a kind 
of silk so closely woven that I guessed it to be 
for purposes of insulation. Leaning over I now 
noticed also for the first time that the four legs 
of my chair were shod with glass. 

When I sat up again, I saw the Marquis Gas- 
pard standing in front of me. 

“Monsieur,” said he, with the very greatest 
gentleness in his manner and tone of voice, 
“Monsieur, the dawn will soon be upon us. We 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET, 183 

can delay no longer now. You are quite sure 
you have no objection to our beginning?” 

One last wave of anguished rebellion gathered 
in my throat, and choked me. Nevertheless, I 
shook my head impatiently, to indicate that I 
had no objection whatever. 

“That is better than I dared hope,” the mar¬ 
quis exclaimed; “I cannot tell how grateful to 
you I am!” 

He was looking at me with an emotion that 
quite surprised me. Visibly affected, and with 
some hesitation, he resumed: 

“Monsieur, there is one thought which I can¬ 
not bear your having even for a single moment: 
the thought that you have fallen, this night, into 
the hands of heartless, inhuman men.” 

I stared at him coldly without answering. 

“The operation I am about to try on you,” he 
resumed, “is something absolutely new. I ad¬ 
vise you with the utmost frankness that it is a 
very dangerous one, though it is not, unfor¬ 
tunately, in my power to avoid it. The best I 
can guarantee is that you will not suffer much 
pain. To add just one more chance that the 
issue 'will be favorable, I have decided not to 
put you to sleep; though the experiment con¬ 
ducted under such conditions will cost me a far 
greater effort, and much more physical suffer¬ 
ing. But if you are awake, with your nerves 


184 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

and muscles at normal tension, yon will be 
better able to withstand the loss of substance 
yon must undergo.” 

He inclined his head to one side, his cheeks 
resting on three of his fingers. 

“I wonder ...” said he, in a voice somewhat 
changed in tone. 

“I was just thinking,” he began again. 
‘ ‘Without any doubt you have papers on your 
person addressed to you under your name, your 
former name, that is . . . Yes! And a pocket 
book perhaps? . . . Exactly . . . Would you be 
so very, very kind as to entrust them all to 
me? . . . They might interfere with our re¬ 
sults . . .” 

Without comment, I unbuttoned my coat and 
thrust a hand into my inside pocket. I found 
there my card case, with a number of visiting 
cards, my road maps, two or three blank en¬ 
velopes, and finally, crumpled through my haste 
in putting it away, the letter—the letter of the 
colonel of artillery. I handed them all to the 
marquis. 

“I thank you!” said he. 

The fold of his thin mouth grew deeper, and 
his tone was now one of great solemnity: 

“Monsieur,” said he, “everything is ready 
now. My last request is that you be kind enough, 
in view of the fact that you will retain your con- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 185 

sciousness, to relax completely, not only every 
sinew of your body but every tension of mind 
and will. Try to play ‘dead,’ if I may say such 
a tiling. Play you are sound asleep. Notice, 
Monsieur, that I attach great importance to 
these (suggestions, which, you can rely upon it, 
are made in the best interests of us both.’’ 

I acquiesced with a slight arching of my brow. 

He saluted me with his most correct and 
formal bow: 

“That is all, Monsieur / 9 said he; “Fare¬ 
well !” 


XXX 


H E had disappeared. 

But a moment later I was conscious of his 
presence close behind me. I knew that he was 
standing there, his eyes fixed upon me; for be¬ 
tween my neck and shoulders I could feel a 
weight, an impact, like the one I had experi¬ 
enced when the Vicomte Antoine found me lying 
on the heath, and the one with which the Count 
Francois welcomed me on my entrance into the 
House of the Secret . . . 

Like these, I say . . . but no! The present 
pressure was something incomparably heavier 
and more forceful—a veritable succession of 
hammer blows descending upon me with a 
violence that left me bruised and dazed. 

Then suddenly . . . everything began to go 
round and round—an overpowering dizziness 
assailed me. The lens of the golden sparkles, 
the armchair opposite me, the clock in the 
corner, the antique chest against the wall, all 
seemed to be caught up in a cyclonic whirl of 
which I was the tottering, collapsing center. In 
spite of the downy prop behind my head and the 
cushions that contained me all around, I seemed 

180 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 187 

to be falling, falling, or soaring, soaring; and 
my frenzied fingers clutched the arms of my 
chair, which, to my sense, now plunged into 
bottomless depths, now darted upwards to im¬ 
possible heights, rocking frightfully meanwhile 
and even turning completely over and around. 
A measureless void was all about me, and my 
single intelligent thought was one of surprise 
that I was not hurtling into this gulf of noth¬ 
ingness. 

An atrocious torture, but a short one! A 
deadening stupor came over me progressively, 
first relieving and finally overcoming my dizzi¬ 
ness. My sensation now was one of extreme 
fatigue, more exhausting than any I had ever 
before experienced. My head especially seemed 
emptied of all its cerebral substance as a result 
of the first shocks I had received; and it lay 
helpless, lifeless, in its hollow formed in the 
upholstery. A whimsical interest in what time 
it might possibly be came to obsess me. I re¬ 
member that I could hardly move my eyes when 
I tried to turn them toward the clock; and if I 
did succeed eventually in focussing them on that 
point, I could not read the clock’s hands, so dark 
and murky had my eyeballs become, so insen¬ 
sitive my retina. t 

A curious tingling began at the ends of my 
fingers and toes, and spread upwards into my 


188 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

hands and arms, and into my feet and legs. It 
was like the beginning of a cramp. 

But the cramp did not come. What I felt 
rather was a kind of chill. But neither was this 
a clearly defined sensation, so rapid, so con¬ 
fused, were the changes and variations in my 
impressions. It was, on the whole, as though 
my body were disintegrating little by little, be¬ 
ing torn apart, filling meanwhile with a strange 
liquid, lighter than blood, in which all my or¬ 
gans, freed from their muscles and tendons, 
seemed to be afloat and drifting. 

The conviction came over me that I was about 
to die. . . . 


It were better not to resume my story! 

My pencil has been lying idle for a long 
time. Here on this marble slab is the black- 
bordered register. I hesitate ... I cast my 
eyes around. . . . 

The noon-dav sun is gilding the tips of the 
cypress trees, while through their stiffened 
branches the winter wind is playing fitfully. 
Not a cloud is visible in that cold blue sky. 
Despite the torpor that besets the arid marrow 
of my bones, I feel almost a thrill of joy at the 
splendor of this last day of mine. . . . 

Yes, it were better to stop my story here! 

Why write on? No one will believe me! In- 



THE HOUSE OP, THE SECRET 189 

deed I myself almost doubt the reality of this 
fabulous, this impossible, this incredible ex¬ 
perience ! If I were not here in this place, if I 
could not read the fateful, irrevocable epitaph 
graven on this stone on which my elbows rest— 
if I could not run my palsied fingers through 
this long snow-white beard—no, I would not 
believe, I would not believe! I would say rather 
that I were dreaming, that I were raving in 
some ghastly mad obsession. 

But the proof, the proof is there! I cannot 
hold my peace! I must finish the narrative I 
have begun. All men, all women—my brothers 
and sisters—are in danger! I must save them! 

0 you who read this my confession, this my 
last will and -testament,—for the love of your 
God, if you have one, do not doubt me! But 
read, understand, believe! 

»l» «••••£ £ 

Yes, I thought I was about to die. 

The strange tingling, now the only sensation 
which I could isolate with any distinctness, was 
running through my whole body, from the tips 
of my toes to the tips of my hair. It was no 
longer like <the first symptoms of a cramp, as 
it had been at the beginning. No, it was some¬ 
thing more regular in beat, more enthralling in 
power. It caused my mind to revert to Made¬ 
leine and the morning rides we used to take 



190 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 


together; to onr picnics in the forest clearings, 
to a fondness she had for burying her naked 
arms in the ground so that I could compare the 
feeling of the smooth warm sand with that of 
her smooth warm sldn. Through my half- 
opened fingers I would strain the minute grains 
and as they fell they made a faint continuous 
sound that I remember for its peculiarity. Such 
a sound I was hearing now; but it came not 
from between my fingers, but from under my 
skin, from inside my flesh—the murmur of an 
invisible sand which my veins and nerves were 
sweeping along their channels in a full, regular, 
unbroken flow, from my heart and my other in¬ 
ternal organs toward my hands and toward my 
feet. This strange flood became a rushing tor¬ 
rent about my wrists and ankles, and around 
the joints of my fingers—narrow passages 
which confined, condensed, cramped the current. 
But it went beyond my own extremities, far 
beyond! How far I could not say. I know 
simply that my fingers and toes were at once 
moist and chilled, like vessels of unglazed pot¬ 
tery which give off water drop by drop and be¬ 
come ice-cold from evaporation. . . . 

And all the time, on the back of my head and 
between my shoulders, I could feel blow after 
blow in furious succession, blows which I know 
came from the all-powertul eyes of the old mar- 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 191 

quis, who stood there relentlessly raining them 
upon me. 

I grew weaker still. A few moments before 
I had tried vainly to look at the clock against 
the wall. Now even my eyelids were paralyzed. 
I could not close my eyes nor could I turn them. 
They were glued inexorably upon the objects 
directly in front of them—the translucent lens 
(the golden glints in its substance glowing now 
mysteriously); the armchair where, for a sec¬ 
ond, I had glimpsed the seated image of myself; 
beyond, a bit of white-washed wall—all blending 
in a blurred whirling confusion. 

As second followed on second I thought I 
could feel more and more of my life flowing 
silently out of my wasting body. . . . 

Then suddenly, something extraordinary oc¬ 
curred ; and I was so shocked by it that I man¬ 
aged, calling on I know not what reserves of 
energy, to open my eyes a little wider *and to 
clear their vision by winking my eyelids several 
times. 

In the chair where I had before seen my own 
image seated, now I could see, clearly, distinctly, 
beyond any possible doubt whatever, beyond 
any chance of its being an hallucination—I could 
see with an unspeakable overwhelming cer¬ 
titude—another image, likewise seated, another 



192 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

image also made of light, bat of a different kind 
of light—a sort of fluctuating phosphorescent 
shadow which was gradually taking form . . « 
out of nothing, . # • 


XXXI 


. . . taking form from nothing. . . . 

At first it could hardly be said to exist at 
all . . . something more tenuous than a shadow 
... as transparent as glass ... all the par¬ 
ticulars of the chair visible through it—cover¬ 
ing, head-rest, arms and back . . . something 
formless, colorless ... a sort of pallid luminous¬ 
ness hazy in outline, changing in texture, sug¬ 
gesting the vague fluorescence in a Gessler 
tube. . . . 

Yet something, nevertheless, something more 
certainly real than the image I had seen shortly 
before—the image of myself refracted through 
the lens . . . something material, tangible, pon¬ 
derable ... as I could sense, as I could feel, 
as I knew with a conviction that excluded all 
doubt . . . something living, perhaps! 

Living, certainly! Yes, something alive; for 
now, inside the tissue, inside the substance of 
this luminous something, I thought I could see 
. . . I could see ... I could see with absolute 
distinctness ... a sort of web, a veritable net¬ 
work of veins and nerves . . . outlined in 
light ... in light brighter than the light of the 

193 



194 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

thing itself . . . and along those nerves and 
through those veins, rushing, streaming, leap¬ 
ing in regular pulsations, a phosphorescent 
liquid ... all coming from one center . . . and 
that center ... a heart! 

I could see . . . but the testimony of my eyes 
was nothing . . . my senses, my feelings, my 
very consciousness . . . told me, convinced me, 
assured me, that that shadow was alive ... Of 
its life I had the same perception that I had of 
my own life. I could feel the beating of that 
heart, as I could feel the beating of my own 
heart; and I could feel, the streaming of that 
phosphorescent blood in those arteries of light 
as I could feel my own red blood in my own 
arteries of flesh. . . . Then at last I knew. . . . 

I knew that that Something, that that Pres¬ 
ence, that that Being was taking form, not from 
nothing, but from me. Not only was it from 
me; it was my very very Self. 

From the depths of my weakness and of my 
agony, from the abyss of mortal terror in which 
my consciousness and my intelligence had been 
engulfed, that one persuasion rose—a clear, 
clear comprehension of all that had been ex¬ 
plained, suggested, threatened in words that had 
hitherto seemed so obscure to me. . . . 

Yes, that Shadow there was I, that Shadow 
sitting in the chair before me, that Shadow of 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 195 

pallid light that was already losing its trans¬ 
parency ! 


• ••••••«» 

I lost my hold on the wisp of sentience to 
which I had been clinging. Weakness overcame 
me. Sight faded from my eyes, and hearing 
from my ears. A black opaque veil descended 
over me, enshrouding me, burying me. I be¬ 
came as one dying, dying . . . dead. 

• •••••••• 

Later, I know not how much later, but after, I 
think, a long, long time, I came to myself again. 

And when I came to myself again, all the life 
that I had lived before I sank into that deathly 
slumber, seemed to have receded into a past in¬ 
finitely, eternally remote, a past more ancient 
than all the ages. 

A pair of cold hands was pressing on my 
temples. I could feel drops of water trickling 
down my face. They came from a wet hand¬ 
kerchief that had been drawn tight across my 
brow. I knew that the Count Frangois was 
standing in front of me, and that he was work¬ 
ing to bring me back to consciousness. 

A sigh forced its way through my lips. My 
eyes opened. I stretched my fingers that had 
gripped the two arms of my chair. . . . 


196 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 

The count removed his hands from my 
temples. 

He wiped my forehead dry. 

He went away. 

Then I saw. . . . 

I saw, in the chair opposite me, seated, a Man. 

A Man like me, exactly like me, like me to the 
last detail: myself. 

I looked at him, and I was not sure whether 
he or I were I. And I was not sure whether we 
were two men, or one man in two persons. I 
raised—how painfully!—an arm; and I suc¬ 
ceeded in raising it because now it had become 
as light as gauze. I raised an arm, I say, to see 
whether the other Man, the other I, would be 
forced, by what I did, to do the same, to raise 
an arm that is, the arm that I raised. But no! 
I moved: and he did not. So then . . . there 
were two of us: I and a Man: two different 
men, separate, distinct Beings. 

Distinct, separate, and yet, unquestionably, 
two parts of one whole, a isingle whole; and all 
my flesh, all my wasted rarefied substance cried 
out desiringly toward that other flesh, that other 
substance that had been torn from me, “ ex¬ 
teriorized^” from me. 

Another Man: a Man, and not a shadow, and 
not a ghost! No spectral trappings; no sheets, 
no shrouds! Clothes! A riding suit, exactly 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 197 


like my riding suit. I looked at the clothes I 
was wearing. I had just bought them new. 
Now they were old, worn out, threadbare . . . 
As old, as worn, as threadbare as I myself! 

Alas! Alas! Why, why am I writing still? 
I know that you who read will not believe . . . 
But I tell you I am not insane! Would a mad¬ 
man talk as I talk ? Another thing: I am about 
to die; and a man does not cross the threshold 
of Eternity with falsehood on his lips . . . Two 
good reasons for not doubting my veracity . . . 

Alas! Alas! I know ... I know . . . why 
should I go on . . . ? 


• • • ® i s t s 

« 

• • • • 


Nevertheless 


XXXII 


. . . the Man got np from his chair and 
walked toward the door. 

I saw that He walked with my walk. When 
He arose, I had felt in the muscles of my hips 
and back, a sudden stiffening as though I too 
were making an effort to rise from my chair. 
Each of his strides thereafter caused rapid con¬ 
tractions of the muscles in my thighs, in the 
calves of my legs, at my ankles. 

He stopped at the door into the anteroom, and 
stood there with his hand on the latch. 

And I heard the voice of the Marquis Gaspard 
speaking, a voice I could scarcely recognize, so 
faint, so broken, so husky had it become—a 
breathing rather than a voice. 

It said: 

“The papers!” 

The towering figure of the Vicomte Antoine 
came between the Man and me. Nevertheless I 
could see, I know not how, that into the Man’s 
pocket the vicomte was slipping my purse and 
the letter from the colonel of artillery. 

“He has them!” the vicomte said. 

The Man opened the door and went away. 


19S 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 199 

Now I say that when He was in the ante¬ 
chamber, separated from me by a thick parti¬ 
tion, I could see Him still . . . not exactly 
through the partition; nor could I, exactly, see 
Him with my own eyes . . . but, as it were, 
with another pair of eyes which went along 
with Him, and did not leave Him any more than 
my eyes left me . . . With these latter eyes I 
could see Him more clearly, more distinctly 
than with my own eyes. 

And when He had left the antechamber, and 
was out there in the garden, under the trees of 
the thickly matted branches, I could see Him 
still. Amd when He had left the garden and 
was out there on the heath—there where the 
plants and trees grew sparse and stunted . . . 
I could see Him still. . . . 

Once more, for one last time, the falsetto of 
the Marquis Gaspard grated on my ears; and I 
sensed that he was mustering all the fainting 
sonorousness of his throat and lungs for a last 
irrevocable declaration. 

“Monsieur,’’ I heard him say, “Monsieur, 
that Man you saw, that Man who has just de¬ 
parted ... be my witness that I created Him 
. . . as God created me. And having created 
Him I have the same right to destroy Him that 
God has to destroy me ... if He is able!” 

The voice died out. . . . 


XXXIII 


A nd i eouid see Him still . . . 

He was walking rapidly, slipping through 
the underbrush with surprising ease. And I 
thought of Madeleine, whom I had seen six 
hours . . . six centuries? . . . before . . . glid¬ 
ing in that same way over the same rough 
ground. 

The dawn was streaking the eastern sky; but 
the valleys behind the screen of mountains were 
still sunk in darkness. Nevertheless I could see 
Him still . . . Though to see Him) was like 
touching Him. Those supernatural moving 
eyes with which I was following Him step by 
step, those miraculous eyes attached to his 
flesh doubtless because his flesh was my flesh 
. . . those infallible eyes which made me see 
with absolute distinctness . . . were like two 
hands . . . feeling rather than seeing. 

The Man was getting farther and farther 
away, walking very rapidly now. Around Him 
I could dimly see the enormous blocks of stone 
with the smooth hewn faces, those monoliths of 
geometrical design, rising naked from the soil, 

200 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 201 


which had astonished me on my own passage 
through them. In that labyrinth the Man did 
not hesitate at all, but hurried on his way with 
the same certainty as before. . . . 

Around my ankles now I could feel the 
scratching of the juniper and the briar ... as 
though it were I and not He whom the thorns 
were tearing . . . And as He kept walking, I 
grew fatigued, more and more fatigued, till a 
sharp pain caught me in the joints of my hips 
and knees. . . . 

The Man was beyond the labyrinth of stones, 
advancing along the deep ravines and preci¬ 
pices which also I recognized from having fol¬ 
lowed the same path six hours before. Not far 
from there, indeed, the spotlight of my guide 
had lighted the faint trail, his cane beating to 
right and left to open the way before me. Those 
very brambles that were now scratching the 
Man’s legs and my legs. . . . 


.»«««•••• 

My cries of “Mercy!” Mercy!” had worn 
me out. 

The Man stopped suddenly. 

The glow of sunrise had now climbed to the 
zenith. The whole landscape was bathed in a 


202 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

pale but brightening light. A clump of tall 
ferns appeared, masking the precipitous wall 
of a ravine. 

The Man stopped, folded his arms, and leaned 
forward. I leaned forward with Him. 

A precipice was there, the precipice on the 
brink of which I had earlier been moved to 
terror. I recognized it, as I had recognized the 
labyrinth of monoliths, the region of ravines 
and precipices, the thickets of juniper and briar. 
I recognized the same smooth wall of the chasm, 
the same white stones of the river bed over 
which the deep black water was rushing in a 
torrent . . . And I recognized the same nause¬ 
ating chill of vertigo. 

In the strip of bright sky along the eastern 
horizon, a first splash of red, the color of blood, 
marked the oncoming of the sun. . . . 

I was striving to master that nausea, that 
vertigo, when an atrocious snap of all my 
muscles hurled me violently from my chair, 
hurled me into the air as a diver is tossed from 
a spring-board. Weak as I was, exhausted, 
prostrate, my muscles contracted with such 
desperate violence that I was thrown up up 
through the air, to fall two, three, four yards 
from my chair, which was thrown over back¬ 
wards by the push I gave it. 

I fell ... I fell . . . my head and arms 


l THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 203 

thrown forward . . . and I lost consciousness 
again. 

I lost consciousness again; but not before I 
had had time to see the Man likewise hurled 
headforemost into the abyss, where He fell, and 
fell, and fell, to be dashed to death on the white 
boulders under the black rushing water . . . 


XXXIV 


T hereafter ... i know not what... 

I knew nothing more. . . . 

Morning . . . morning, and raining still. 
Through the grated window of my bedroom- 
prison, a sticky viscous light was making its 
way. I was lying on the bed. When I awakened, 
I tried to rise on my elbow to look around me. 
I could not: I had not the strength. 

But suddenly I could see ... I could see, in 
another place. . . . 

Rushing water . . . tall green reeds . . . 
moss ... a lofty, vertical wall of rock . . . 
white cobblestones washed by a tumbling 
stream . . . and, on the jagged point of a 
boulder, a corpse, my corpse, me. . . . 

I could see that my clothing was soaked, the 
water covering my breast and shoulders, and 
filling my wide opened eyes . . . But I did not 
feel the cold liquid contact of the stream, nor 
the chilling north wind, laden with rain, that 
was beating upon my back and legs which were 
out of water on the narrow bank of the torrent 
there. I could feel nothing. I was dead. I 
mean to say that the Man was dead, that Man 

204 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 205 

who was, and still is, 1. I could see a large 
red hole in the back of his head—the wound 
made by the rock He struck, the wound through 
which his life had spurted away. . . . The back 
of my head ... of me who was lying there on 
that bed in that chamber . . . pained me ter¬ 
ribly. 

•siefffifftife** 

So I lay there, inert. Several times I tried to 
move. Move I could not; nor was there any¬ 
thing I could do. Through the half-opened win¬ 
dow the resinous fragrance of rain-soaked fir- 
trees came. For a moment, they entered the 
room—the Count Frangois and the Vicomte An¬ 
toine, I mean. They examined me, felt my 
pulse, my legs and arms, the back of my head. 
But soon they went out again. I was left alone. 

• m******* 

All that I have just been telling even then 
belonged to the distant past, a past fabulously 
remote. 

I was lying on the bed, inert, watching my 
dead body awash in the stream. I tried to re¬ 
member what had happened. . . . 

Yes ... I fell ... I was bending over the 
edge to peer into the depths of the chasm . . . 
and a heavy blow struck me between the shoul¬ 
ders . . . one of those blows such as I had sev- 


206 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

eral times received between tbe shoulders . . • 
and on the back of my head . . . blows from 
the overwhelming gaze of those old men . . . 
of the old marquis . . . which had pounded me 
to pulp. 

So then, I was watching the dead body . . . 
my dead body. . . . Carrion already old! Flies 
swarming on and over it. The torrent foaming 
around and against it—and running water 
erodes, dissolves, disintegrates! . . . Yes, car¬ 
rion indeed! . . . The coffin maker must come 
soon, or little will be left for him! . . . 

Carrion already old! 

But not so old as my living body—that too 
was old, limitlessly aged! 

Was I as old as this, a little while before? 
Or had the sun merely stopped in the heavens? 
And if so, how long? For many many years? 
I could not say. . . . 

I remember, yes ... I fainted ... I lost 
consciousness completely. When I fell over the 
cliff . . . my head and my hands struck hard 
on the tiled floor ... the Ever-living Men 
probably brought me to the room and put me on 
that bed. . . . Perhaps the rushing water of the 
stream, or the rain, or the winter wind turned 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 207 

me so old. . . . One cannot help but change 
. . . lying out in the weather! . . . 

Old! old, old! And older, older, every min¬ 
ute, every second! 

My hand went to my chin . . . A beard was 
beginning to appear there. . . . It was growing 
rapidly ... a gray beard. ... As I passed 
a hand over my temples, I could feel deep 
wrinkles there. 

Three times the door of my chamber opened 
partly, and I could see the faces of the Ever- 
living Men peering in at me attentively. On 
each occasion I feigned sleep, closing my eyes 
. . . But not entirely. . . . My eyelids were far 
enough apart for me to spy on what they did. 
. . . They did nothing. . . . But this I saw . . . 
I saw that they were astounded . . . plainly, 
evidently astounded at the age, the sudden age 
that had come over me. . . . 

I lay there inert. . * . 

What time was it, I wondered? What day of 
the week? What month of the year? And the 
year—was it of the era of our Lord? 

My beard was gray at first. Now it had 
whitened. It had grown broad and long. . . . 
Thus do beards and hair grow on the bodies of 
the dead, I thought. The flesh seemed to have 



208 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


left my hands. Through the dry darkened skin 
that covered them I could feel brittle knotted 
bones. . . . 

Was the sun setting? It was growing dark in 
my bedroom-prison. Only a faltering light was 
now making its way through the grated window. 
And the water rushed foaming, whirling along, 
black and green, around my corpse ... softened 
the latter seemed . . . mushy, gluey, loathe- 
some. . . . 


Yes, night was coming on. . . . Again the 
Living Men entered to visit me . . . the father 
and the son I mean. . . . The grandfather was 
not with them. . . . He was out of sight and 
hearing. . . . They came and stood at my bed¬ 
side, looking at me for a long time, visibly pre¬ 
occupied, visibly alarmed. . . . 

They went away again, and still without a 
word. On the tripod candlestick, the candela¬ 
brum of the three crossed lances, three candles 
were burning brightly now . . . three points of 
flame for the three long shafts. . . . Darkness 
was creeping down the chasm. . . . The water 
was moaning black in the on-coming night. 


Ho! Ho-ho! What was that? Torches in 
my chamber! And voices shouting! Ah no! 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 209 

Not in my chamber . . . down there, along the 
stream . . . np on the cliffs, above the chasm 
. . . Down there, of course! "What could I have 
been thinking off 

Torches on the brink of the abyss. . . . Faces 
peering into the black void. . . . Uniforms! Red 
trousers, blue coats. . . . And a stretcher. . . . 
A good idea! A good idea! . . . Of course! Of 
course! For me, for me! 

Voices calling. An oath or two. A voice 
louder than the others bidding these be silent. 
I heard everything distinctly. Yes, every word. 

“But I see him, I tell you! Look, there he 
is! Down in that hole! Gotta get down there 
someway!” 

“Watch your step, boy! What a hole!” 

“What the hell! I done worse places than 
this before. . . . The Devil roast my soul! 
Stinks a bit, this fellow! Whew! ’ 9 

“Aw go on, what are you giving us!” 

“But I say, Sergeant, he’s rotten!” 

“What do you mean, rotten! Can’t have been 
there more than twelve hours!” 

“All right. ... I can’t say how long he’s 
been here. . . . But I know rotten beef when I 
smell it. . . . Guess it’s from being in the 
water! Say, just chuck that piece of canvas 
down. . . . We’ll pass it under him and draw 
up the four corners. . . . This is no man . . . 


210 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

just soup! Easier to spoon him up with a 
ladle!” 

“Damn it, man . . . what have you found? 
Somebody else! Take a squint at him. . . . 
We’ve got to get the right man! What’s he got 
in his pockets?” 

“Sticky damn mess! Whew! But here we 
are! Our man, all right! Yes! Identification 
card! Other stuff with his name on it! And 
here’s his revolver! Our man, Sergeant, no 
doubt of that. How about that rag! Sending it 
down?” 

“When you get him ready, you give the word 
and we ’ll haul up! ” 

“Righto! One, two, three, and you pull! . , . 
Well, I’ll be damned!” 

“What’s worrying you now?” 

“Why this here corpse! Weighs about an 
ounce and a half!” 

“What’s that? Lord, if he’s as far gone as 
that. . . . Say, give a look around! Maybe 
you’ve left some on the rocks, a leg or an arm, 
or something!” 

“No! Got everything, Sergeant, head and 
all! All right at the other end?” 

“All right here!” 

“Well then up she goes!” 

“And now we’re off. . . . 


• • « 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 211 


“Hey, don’t shake the thing so mnch when 
yon walk!” 

“Oh rats! Hell of a lot this bird cares 
whether there’s springs on his hearse!” . . . 

I lay there inert. . . . 

I could feel the pressure and the scrape of the 
canvas on my head, and legs and arms. . . . 
The litter went along jostling me ... I could 
see everything, clearly . . . the flickering of the 
torches there, and the gleaming of the candles 
at the points of the three crossed lances. . . . 

Total darkness outside! ... Not a ray of 
light coming through the grated window. Not 
one last trace of twilight on the mountain 
trail. . . . 

The canvas tightened, and closed my eyes. 
There on the heath a shroud of canvas! There 
in my room a shroud of slumber! Sleep! An¬ 
other death! . . . 


XXXV 


D AWN again. ... I cannot see the new 
morning light; hut I am conscious of its 
approach. The grated window is still dark; but 
I am sure the night is ending. Through the 
thick panes of glass, I feel a chill, the harbinger 
of day. 

The three candles have burned low on the tips 
of the three lances. Their wicks have curled in 
upon themselves, sinking into the last drops of 
molten wax. Only a faint uncertain flame is 
sputtering from them now and that bit of light 
threatens to go out at intervals. 

Sleep seems to have done me good, giving me 
back some strength, however little. 

“ Could I sit up now, if I tried ?” 

How long have I been here? Let’s figure it 
out, from the beginning, from the beginning 
of my Adventure! Or rather, no . . . let’s go 
backward from today . . . Today, yes . . . 
sunrise . . . there was a sunrise yesterday . . . 
cold and rainy. That’s one day . . . the day 
when I grew old so fast ... I got this way 
yesterday, between dawn and twilight! . . . 

212 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 213 

The night before that, night before last ... I 
came to this House, the House of the Secret. 
. . . Last night, and night before last. Yester¬ 
day between. . . . Two nights and one day, in 

all. ... 

One single day . . . yet how deep these 
wrinkles, how withered the skin on this aged 
face of mine! And these bristles on my face 
. . . on my cheeks and chin . . . bristles white 
as snow, white as hoar-frost! One day for them 
to grow . . . just one day . . . but a day that 
lies heavier than a century upon my soul! Who 
will ever believe me when I tell this story? No 
one! No one! 

Could I sit up, if I tried? But first, I must 
get rid of this sheet that’s tied around me. . . . 
Trusses me all up, and I can’t move. . . . The 
sheet? Where’s the sheet? Here’s a sheet; 
but it doesn’t seem to be troubling me. . . . 
Where’s the . . . ah, yes ... it’s the sheet 
on Him—on the Man, I mean. . . . They have 
swathed Him in a sheet. ... I can still see. 
. . . I see. ... So naturally . . . natural, isn’t 
it ? ... I get things mixed a little. . . . 

• •••••••• 

Dawn ... no doubt about it now . . . the 
oblong opening of the grated window is pale 
with light. 



214 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

I did not hear the door open ... I was 
caught by surprise. I had no time to close my 
eyes. 

There they are again, the two of them, the 
Count Frangois and the Vicomte Antoine. They 
are looking at me . . . And I can easily see, see 
as easily as yesterday ... I can see they don’t 
know what to make of it . . . don’t know what 
to make of me, that is. 


“ Monsieur, be so good as to get up, I beg of 
you.” It was the Count Frangois who spoke. 

And I arose, without the slightest difficulty. 
I was weak, very weak indeed, but light, ever so 
light ... as light as the air about me . . . 

The Count Frangois spoke again: 

“Monsieur, my father is very tired today; 
he is in no condition to leave his room. For 
that reason my son and I have come to ask you 
to go with us to him.” 

I followed them. . . . What difference did it 
make to me whether I was in one place or in 
another? 


The old man, the Marquis Gaspard, I did not 
see. ... A portiere of antique silk was stand¬ 
ing in front of his bed, there in his chamber. Of 
the bed I could see the four columns of carved 




THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 215 

wood which supported the canopy. It was a 
square bed, without curtains. . . . That was all 
I saw. . . . 

But I recognized the queer falsetto of the 
marquis, and the marvelously gentle and per¬ 
suasive tone his voice could assume, when it 
was not hardened with wilfulness or isoured 
with irony. 

The Living Man began to speak. I stood in 
the doorway listening . . . And as I listened, 
this worn-out memory of mine, a memory so 
wasted, so decayed that one by one all my 
recollections of the good old days have fallen 
away as dust from it, took in his every word so 
deeply, so burningly, that I shall remember all 
he said till my course is wholly run. 

He began to speak. He said: 

“Monsieur, I had greater hopes of my own 
magnetic resources and of your powers of 
resistance. I cannot say I regret having done 
what I did. ... I did my duty. . . . Our se¬ 
curity, our peace of mind, our probable immor¬ 
tality could be conserved in no other way. Those 
at any rate are now adequately safe-guarded, 
at the price simply of a somewhat greater ef¬ 
fort. But I should be much better satisfied had 
the experiment cost you a fatigue as great as 
mine, without drawing so deeply on your vital 
reserves. To be sure, I warned you that what 


216 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 

we were about to do might prove extremely 
dangerous. I feared for your life especially 
when the moment would necessarily come for 
breaking the magnetic bond that connected you 
with the Being I derived from your substance. 
I foresaw also a great and cruel suffering on 
your part when I should kill, as I was obliged 
to kill, this newly created Being. Now those 
two shocks you withstood marvelously, Mon¬ 
sieur; but only to fall quite unexpectedly for 
us, into the particular state of languor and ex¬ 
haustion in w T hich I see you now. Monsieur, 
I am immensely, immensely sorry; and I trust 
you will understand that, had it been within my 
power, I would have been only too glad to leave 
you in a much stronger and sturdier state of 
health!’ 9 

A pause ... I drew back a step, with the 
idea of returning to my room. But the voice 
began again, in a slower and more solemn tone. 

“ Monsieur, since things are as they are, the 
simplest course for you is to bow to the in¬ 
evitable. But I venture to point out that the 
present situation, bad as it is, is not without 
its advantage for you. The objections we were 
obliged to put forward originally to your im¬ 
mediate release obtain no longer. A favor we 
could not think of granting to the man you 
were yesterday at this hour—a man robust of 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 217 


body and vigorous of will, we are only too 
happy to accord to the man you are today—an 
aged invalid, broken in body and weak from 
more weaknesses than one. . . . Monsieur, you 
are, from this moment, free, a freedom without 
any qualifications or restrictions whatsoever. 
As soon as you choose to say so, my grandson 
will have the honor of showing you to our door. 
You may go anywhere you wish. We ask only 
that you refrain from mentioning to any living 
soul the things that you have seen during your 
stay in this House. I am sure you will decide 
to say nothing of them. ’ ’ 

Still I stood there listening. Somehow I was 
not at all surprised at this offer of my freedom 
however unexpected. I stood there listening; 
and I could feel the words I had heard sinking 
deeply into me, eating their way into the sub¬ 
stance of my brain to remain there with indeli¬ 
ble fixity. ... I stood there listening. . . . 

Ah yes! I understand, I understand! From 

what I have been through, my will, my intelli- 

<■ '• ' * 

gence, my reason, have all been rarefied, de¬ 
pleted. My head is half emptied, as it were; 
and these sentences that are being addressed 
to me, these orders that are being given me, this 
password of silence that is being graven eternal¬ 
ly upon my memory, all dictated by another 
will, another intelligence, another reason, are 


218 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

to be substituted in my brain by what is no 
longer there, for what has been taken away, 
and made to fill the intolerable hollowness of 
my skull! . . . 

The falsetto voice concluded: 

“For the rest you have our promise . . . 
Madame de X. . . the girl you love, left our 
abode last night. . . . She will never again be 
recalled to us. . . .” 

Madame de X. . .? The girl I love? ... I 
love? Ah yes, yes, yes! I had forgotten! You 
see, Pm an old old man and my heart is empty 
too . . . sucked dry, impoverished! I’m an 
old old man! Many things have changed in me 
. * . Madame de X? . . . Ah yes! . . . Made¬ 
leine! Madeleine will never be recalled! Yes, 
of course. She will never come back here again. 
. . . As we agreed. 

The falsetto voice fell silent with two words: 

6 6 Farewell, Monsieur! ’ 7 

All was finished! 

At the door, the outer door, of the heavy 
oaken panels studded with iron nails, and which 
had just been opened ... on the highest of 
the eight steps leading down from it . . . the 
Count Frangois and the Vicomte Antoine like¬ 
wise said to me: 


.THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 219 

“Farewell, Monsieur.” 

I crossed the garden, my feet treading and 
crushing the tall unmown grass, my head graz¬ 
ing the thick matted branches of the pine and 
cedar trees. 

The gate was open. 

I hurried through it. 

And now I was out upon the heath, walking 
indifferent to direction save that I turned my 
face toward the brightening dawn. . . . 


XXXVI 


1 WALKED all day long, from the blue twi¬ 
light of morning to the red glow of after¬ 
noon, following a route which I am sure I could 
not find again. I know simply that it was 
always straight ahead. And I felt no fatigue 
until after I arrived. 

That was late, very late in the afternoon. 
Straight ahead I walked continuously, not 
knowing whither I was bound, with no idea that 
I was going anywhere. Then suddenly I no¬ 
ticed that I was on a broad high-way, and in 
front of me to left and right some houses came 
into view. 

Beyond them, a bridge, a draw-bridge. I 
recognized Toulon, Toulon and its ramparts. 

Through the arching gate the sun shone red 
as blood. 

Yes, it would soon be evening! A sudden 
weariness came over me, and my feet began to 
lag on the dusty road. But I went on, on, on, 
not knowing or caring whither, just going on 
.... as iron goes toward the magnet. . . 

The town finally! 


220 



THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 221 

On my right a shop! 

At my side an old old man, the picture of 
poverty, near-sighted, ragged, bent, with long 
white hair and a long white beard. I stopped, 
and he stopped too. 

Ah yes! I understand! This old man beside 
me is I—myself, reflected in a mirror of the 
shop! . . . 

Farther along, the crossing of two streets. 

Aha! A house that looks familiar. My 
house—the house where I used to live! 

So that was the goal toward which I had been 
going all along unconsciously! My legs seemed 
suddenly paralyzed, I could go no farther. I 
leaned against a wall there where I was; and 
I gazed, and gazed, with all my eyes. . . . 


XXXVII 


W ITH all my eyes, I say. . . . 

The street was full of people, crowding 
sidewalks and pavement, edging about this way 
and that and talking in hushed voices. Most of 
them were dressed in black. A goodly number 
of military and naval men in parade uniform 
were standing to one side, grouped around some 
higher officers whose plumes I could distinguish 
over the heads of the throng. Among them a 
tall impressive personage, with a grand cor¬ 
don on his breast. A noble face of regular out¬ 
lines! Ah yes! My admiral, the governor! 
Vice-Admiral de Fierce! 

A Cross, with priests behind it. The red 
cauls of the choir boys stand out against the 
surplices and albs of white and gold. A canon’s 
gown is fidgeting nervously about in the com¬ 
pany of clergy. „ . 

Farther on, a squad of colonial troops, clrawn 
up in line, their guns at rest. . . . They are 
waiting for something, apparently. . . c 

Spectators looking on from the windows and 
down from the roofs and balconies of the houses, 
a . . Flocks of urchins climbing pillar^ and 

222 


THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 223 

posts, seeking points of vantage. . . . But there 
is no laughing nor shouting. The crowd is in 
a serious, earnest mood, or is trying to seem so. 

All eyes are on the door of my house, which 
is heavily draped in mourning. A shield of 
velvet has been set up above the casing and on 
it I can read two initials in silver: A. N. Of 
course: A. N.: Andre Narcy! That’s what they 
must stand for. 

Of course! I understand! My funeral! Of 
course! 

Here is the hearse, slowly drawing up as the 
crowd divides before it. The horses are heavily 
caparisoned; on the four ebony columns that 
adorn the coffin-rest, four heavy plumes are 
waving. And oh, how many wreathes! Ten, 
twenty, thirty of them I can count, all of them 
bedecked with the tricolor of my country! On 
each an inscription in letters of gold. I cannot 
read them at this distance. Perhaps, later, 
when they pass this way. . . . 

Ah! . . . What’s the matter now? The crowd 
is all astir. . . . They are probably bringing out 
the body. . . . Yes, there it is . . . the hooded 
bearers are coming down from the front door. 
How fast they walk! Not much of a load after 
all. ... I rise on tip-toe to see better. . . . My 
coffin is of the flat topped kind common in the 
South of France 1 The wood cannot be seen. 


224 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


They have draped it in a heavy cloth. . . . Here 
are some other men in hoods. . . . They go up 
to the hearse and place on my coffin a military 
cloak of mine—light blue—then a cavalry sabre, 
with its scabbard; and these clink as they are 
laid one across the other. Of course. . . that’s 
the custom at military funerals . . . my uni¬ 
form and my sword! I suppose my Distin¬ 
guished Service Cross is there.... I cannot see 
it. . . . There is hardly time to look at every¬ 
thing. . . For . . . something else I see . . . 
yes . . . with those other eyes of mine, those 
moving unfailing eyes that can see through 
walls, and rocks, and trees. . . . They can see 
just as well through the boards of a coffin. . . . 
Yes, I see, I see perfectly well! 

Oh! Oh! Oh! What horror! What horror! 

A blast of trumpets. ... The cortege 
moves. . . . 

Leading the way come the priests chanting 
the ritual ... the ritual of the dead. . . . Then 
eight officers, the pall-bearers of honor. Then 
the soldiers. ... At last, the hearse. . . . 

Oh, careful, careful, please! The springs of 
the hearse creak over the rough pavement! Oh, 
careful, careful, please! You are jostling me 
too hard, too hard! It is a poor miserable 




THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 225 


corpse you are carrying there. ... It must not 
be treated so! Look out! Don ? t you see there, 
Under the hearse? The coffin is leaking! Black 
drops are oozing out and falling one by one 
upon the pavement. 

• • • •••••« 

The crowd moves off behind the procession. 

Now they have turned the corner ... on the 
way to the church . . . and thence to the ceme¬ 
tery. They seem to be hurrying . . . yes . . . 
because night is falling fast. . . . 

One by one the windows close. The street is 
empty now. 

I remained where I was, my back still 
propped against the wall. My weariness over¬ 
came me suddenly. My legs gave way at the 
knees. I slipped slowly to the ground. 

Yet the determination to go on arose within 
me. I got to my feet, somehow. I crossed the 
street toward my house! Toward my house— 
of course! Where else should I go, except to 
my house? 

The front door had been left open, the heavy 
black crepe dangling around it. I reached the 
threshold! I stopped. 

There in the hall-way stood a little table 
covered with a black silk tablecloth. On it was 


226 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 

an ink-well, a pen, and a heavy funeral register. 
Through the open door a draught was coming 
strong, blowing the black-bordered pages over 
one by one. 

I turned them back, and found the frontis¬ 
piece. 

It was covered with hastily scribbled signa¬ 
tures. There my friends and messmates, along 
with many strangers, had written their names, 
as the custom is. Yes, and heading them all, 
was my name, the name I had formerly had, 
that is. It was not written, however, but penned 
in print: 

MONSIEUR CHARLES-ANDRE NARCY 

CAPTAIN OF CAVALRY, D.S.C. 

Died the twenty-first of December, 1908, in the 
thirty-third year of his age . 

I picked up the register and hid it under my 
clothing—the threadbare rags that had once 
been my riding suit. 

And I went away! 

I went away. Why not? This house be¬ 
longed to Captain Charles-Andre Narcy — the 
man who was dead. . . My house was some¬ 
where else . . . obviously . . . somewhere else. 

I went away. 


.THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 227 

And I too walked rapidly, outside in the 
street. . . . Eapidly, yes; though I staggered at 
every step from sheer exhaustion. . . . 

The street was ... no ... it was not quite 
deserted. . . . There, on the sidewalk across 
from me stood ... a man? a woman? Some¬ 
one ! Someone who was standing motionless in 
front of the house, and looking at the door that 
was heavily draped in mourning. . . . 

A man? A woman? A woman! A good- 
looking woman . . . well dressed ... a single 
piece dress of a light color. . . . She was carry¬ 
ing a muff, a big fluffy muff that completely 
swallowed her small hands ... a muff of er¬ 
mine. . . . 

I knew the woman. Of course! It was she 
. . . Madeleine. . . . I knew her very well. But, 
you understand . . . I was dead, was I not? Be¬ 
sides, I was very, very old.... Surprised more 
than moved. ... In fact, not at all aroused . . . 
my emotions! Just surprised! But very much 
surprised! 

Anyhow ... I would just walk by her . . . 
curiosity merely. . . . 

Yes, she, beyond a doubt. . . . Her eyes were 
glued to the door of mourning. And I could see 
. . . that was strange! . . . why, she was weep¬ 
ing, weeping . . . great silent burning tears! 

Weeping? That was strange! I hadn’t ex- 


228 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


pected to find her weeping! Oh, for that matter 
. . . a woman’s tears! 

All the same, I felt I ought to do some¬ 
thing. . . . 

With a moment’s hesitation I stepped up to 
her: 

“Mad. . . .” 

She started from her grieving reverie, saw 
that I was there, swept her great mntf across 
her tear - stained cheeks. . . . Then she felt 
aronnd inside the mntf with her fingers, tossed 
me a handful of coins . . . and fled. . . . 


xxxvm 


A ND I fled too. 

There was no doubt after that! I was 
dead! Very very dead! More dead perhaps 
than He, than the other Man, whose corpse I 
see, I persist in seeing there inside its co ffin 
... a terribly wasted corpse, frightfully de¬ 
composed. More dead than He, because He 
does not know that He is dead; while ... I 
. . . I. . . . 

Furthermore it was not his funeral they were 
celebrating; it was mine.... I am the man those 
tears were for . . . and those flowers, and those 
uniforms, and the hushed voices of the multi¬ 
tude ... all that fascinated gazing at my deco¬ 
ration, my shoulder straps, my sabre . . . there 
on the coffin. And those same people are now 
shivering out there in this cold of a December 
evening ... to pay their respects to . . . me 
. . . to me . . . not to Him. 

And I should be there too . . . with them. 
I must hurry. . . . 


The red of the sunset is turning to lavender 
. . . a color of death and mourning. . . The 
leafless sycamores along the boulevard are 

229 




230 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


spreading on that sombre sheet of flame the 
black lace-work of their twigs and branchlets. 
At the zenith a depth of emerald green is grow¬ 
ing deeper. . . 

Is there something beyond death, I wonder? 
Something? Anything? 

No! I cannot believe that possible! I can 
see that corpse too well . . . that corpse, in its 
coffin. . . . 


A great crowd around my grave . . . almost 
as great as the throng in front of my house. . .. 
It is only a short walk from town . . . the 
graveyard. . . . 

No, the ceremony is over. . . . The sexton is 
filling the grave. ... I can hear the gravel as 
it strikes my coffin. . . . 

It seems to be all covered now. ... I walked 
too slowly. . . . But I was very tired. . . . 

The earth they are throwing into the hole.... 
I can feel it heavier and heavier upon my chest. 
. . . Six feet deep. ... I never knew it could 
be so very heavy! 

Now everything is over. The grave is filled. 
. . . The people are going home. 

Home? No, I shall stay here! Where have 
I to go? This place here, henceforth, is home 
for me . . . my home! 



XXXIX 


VTOW all is written. I have told my story. 

* Here my pencil rests on this flagstone, 
this lid of shale that covers my grave and al¬ 
ready bears my epitaph. My pencil. ... I laid 
it here. It is worn to the wood. And I have 
closed the register. All its pages to the very 
last are covered with my cramped close-scrib¬ 
bled writing. 

All is written. All—everything! And every¬ 
thing I was in duty bound to write—for men and 
women—my brothers and sisters—are in dan¬ 
ger though they know’ it not. And I had to 
write . . . because my tongue is tied . . . 
paralyzed, petrified in my mouth . . . 

All is written. You who read what I have 
written know the truth . . . for the love of 
your God, if you have one, do not doubt my 
word . . . but understand, believe. . . . 

The sun has vanished below the horizon. 
Night has come. . . . My last night. . . . Yes, 
death will come to me ere long! My life has 
run its course. Its lamp is going out, because 
the oil has burned away! 

On this long polished flagstone which has 


232 THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 


been my writing table and on which my elbows 
rest I can still spell out my epitaph, though the 
light is failing: 

Here Lies 

CHARLES-ANDRE NARCY 

Born April 27, 1878 
Died December 21,1908. 

December 21, 1908 ... or January 22, 1909. 
. . . January 22, 1909—that’s today! Just a 
month . . . no, not quite a month ... a month 
less one day. . . I have been here on this tomb, 
on my tomb, waiting for death, my second 
death. . . . 

A month. . . One month. . . And all the 
while my eyes have been gazing down under this 
flagstone . . . my eyes? those other eyes, I 
mean . . . which see . . . which insist on see¬ 
ing . . . implacably . . . gazing down under 
this flagstone upon a coffin . . . my coffin. . . . 
The coffin is quite new and undecayed. . . . 
But it holds only a skeleton ... a naked skele¬ 
ton, without clothing ... its clothes . . . my 
clothes, were far too thin . . . they fell to dust 
immediately. Nothing except the bones are 
left; and they too are all but vanishing. On 
them, however, I can see something . . . the 
letter of the colonel of artillery . . . they buried 


THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET 233 


it by mistake with the corpse ... it is still 
quite legible. . . . 

Yes, a skeleton ... a skeleton about to fall 
away to dust . . . nothing but a skeleton. . . 
How can I continue living if I am nothing, after 
all, but that skeleton plus this ruin of wasted 
flesh and bone that has collapsed on this grave 
here? Impossible, assuredly! Impossible, for¬ 
tunately. . . . 

A month . . . one month! The earth came 
up around the edges of this flagstone ... so 
heavy that it sank into the loosened ground.. . . 
Some workmen came and levelled the mound 
again, tamping the earth down under the stone 
. . . so heavy the stone . . . and heavy the 
earth under it. . . . Oh, my tired body cannot 
support such burdens longer . . . 

Tomorrow when they come to bury me they 
will put me in another grave. . . . And I shall 
have that other earth and another stone to bear! 
No man surely was ever tormented thus! 

The sun is sinking again ... In the west the 
sky is reddening ... as red as it was the day 
of my funeral. . . . 

The weather is clear. ... Not a single cloud 
disturbs the even azure of the firmament. . . . 


F7/t ¥ 

m.u. 

234 THE HOUSE OP THE SECRET 

1 / 

The winter wind has fallen and the branches of 
the cypress trees have ceased their murmur¬ 
ing. ... A gleam of blood-red light is striking 
on their black tips.... Over all the heavens and 
over all the earth a great and sombre beauty 
glows. . . . Splendor and Serenity . . . reach¬ 
ing even into my soul. . . . 

Farewell. . . . 


FINIS. 


















































